


Wicked Games

by LittleSister



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: But is it going to be okay in the end???, Ch 9 can be read as a one shot i guess, Drama has finally come, I do not know how to tag, M/M, Marital Problems, Slow ass friends to lovers, Starbomb (Game Grumps), There's a lot of sleep deprivation in this fic, Tour Shenanigans, Touring, Uhm.. dirty talk?, Uuuuuuuuuh tune in and find out!, Winkwinkwinkwink, if you catch my drift
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 08:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSister/pseuds/LittleSister
Summary: Ninja Sex Party is touring with Starbomb, and it may be time for Dan to face the more rainbow side of himself. For the show's sake, that is.Also Arin is a competitive little bitch.(title inspired by either Chris Isaak or the Weeknd, depending on your taste. I personally fucking love both songs)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this is my first Grumps fic and I'm also fairly new to the fandom, so keep that in mind if something feels out of character or if some facts sound like complete bullshit, grumps-wise. I'ts gonna get dirtier. Also it becomes beta-ed from chapter 2, thanks to NeonDreams, so sorry if ch.1 feels a little messy.. Bear with me, I get better with practice I promise

Arin opens his soda can and the fizz is drastically loud in Dan's ears. It snaps him out of the lazy fog that's been creeping up on him during the last half hour of mindless, blissful post-show-hotel-hanging-around in Arin's room.

 

Brian is sprawled on the poofy, sand-colored armchair, head propped up on an elbow as he browses god knows what on his phone. Dan lays on his side on Arin's bed, looming over Arin as he scrolls through Instagram with his free hand, his face illuminated by the screen, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed loosely and his back against the side of the mattress.

Dan can't help feeling a little sorry for him, being the actual owner of the room and having to sit on the floor, but as he wiggles and his hipbone seems to sink a little further in the soft mattress of his co-host's room, he can't bring himself to care enough, and he dopily smiles to himself as a fresh wave of warmth, post-show endorphins and fatigue washes over his body.

He doesn't realize Arin was looking up at him until he sees his friend smile back, and Dan blinks a couple of times to bat sleep's hand away from his skull.

 

It's just the three of them, and the jokes and laughter have steadily been dying down along with their adrenaline-high, giving way to tired giggles interluded with comfortable silence and sleepy stupidity.  
Arin downs the last mouthful of Sprite before unceremoniously laying his phone on the ground and grabbing a new can from the nightstand beside Dan's head. He snaps it open, groaning obscenely at the sound and pressing a kiss to the cold tin.

"Ugh, Arin come on"

Dan huffs his name like a small laugh, pushing his fist against Arin's shoulder lightly, and even though the force behind the shove is pathetic, Arin still sways a little to the side, chuckling as he takes a swig.

"I wish you would would still pop me like that, daddy"

Brian's voice is as deadpan as his face, and he doesn't even look down at Arin as he says it and grins to himself.

"Well if you hadn't stopped taking the pill without telling me I would, you sneaky little bitch"

Brian yawns as he stands up and scratches his stomach, carelessly walking right up to Arin and sitting down on his heels so they're face to face. He cups his face and pulls him in, kissing the tip of his nose with a theatrical wet smooch that to Dan sounds like a mixture of old aunt and highschool sweetheart.

 

"I just want you to impregnate me with your beautiful baby, Arin, fucking sue me"

 

Arin's small bun bumps against the back of Dan's hand as he lays his head back on the mattress and laughs low and warm, pushing Brian's face away, then wiping the spot on his nose Brian kissed. Dan can't help joining in, feeling his eyes crinkle in the same way Arin's do.

"Wow guys, way to end up this lovely night rejoicing in my scorn. Very cool."

They both wave Brian goodnight, and the thud of the door closing behind him plunges the room back into the previous soft quiet. Arin lets his legs fall flat to the floor, head still tilted back and his eyes closed, a smile clinging to his face. Dan looks down at him for a moment and then rolls onto his back, hands resting on his chest.

"Dude"

 

"Yeah Dan"

 

Dan shoots a sideway glance at him and his eyes are still closed, so he closes his too.

 

"That was some gay shit right there"

 

Arin huffs, then slightly rolls his head towards Dan's face so he can look at him, one eyebrow raising a bit.

"Yeah, fuckin Brian right? Why did you have to invite him?"

Their eyes meet for a second as Dan snorts and Arin resumes his earlier position. After a couple of seconds, Dan breaks the silence again.

"No but like, you guys are so comfortable with it"

"Is this about the show?"

Dan stares briefly at the ceiling as flashes from the previous hours rush to his mind.

 

Starbomb had a new song that started as a lyrical battle between mortal enemies declaring their opposite ideals, eventually developing in them acclaiming the exact same stuff, which would lead up to them making out, ending up together, or whatever you wanna call it.

It was a super fun piece to perform, and Brian had pitched the idea of Arin and Dan ending it with a passionate Tango session, resulting in a casquè, and even -gasp- a kiss if they felt up to it, maybe just on the first gig to warm the crowd up to it, but it was just an idea.

Dan had no freaking clue of how to.. Tango in general, so, in retrospect, he must have looked a little nervous about it, however enthusiastic about Brian's pitch in its entirety.

During rehearsals, Arin would always mess up the very last part of it, dropping Dan on the floor and leaving him there, or collapsing on top of him and fake-hump him. Other times it would be Dan's turn toscrew around, and he would just straight head butt Arin in revenge or scream right in his face.

 

There were some serious times too, of course, where they would blaze all the way through it and Dan would end up panting in Arin's arms, ready to be casquè-ed and.. well maybe not ready to smooch his best friend every single time they had to rehearse the song, but maybe a couple of times just to see if it was okay?  
Arin had never really tried though, and Dan hadn't either, so he really can't tell why he was so bugged when it just didn't happen on stage.

 

A small sense of vertigo rakes over Dan when Arin just nails the question right there and then, leaving him fumbling for an answer a little. His right leg jiggles as he bends the left at the knee, and he imagines looking at them from where the door is, Arin's shoulders framed between Dan's left knee and elbow, but only visually.

"Yeah, I guess"

Someone would say he could have done better, but honestly, this already feels weird enough, and Dan wants to let his brain adjust to the discomfort before saying.. whatever, really.

"What about it?"

"I don't know Arin, it's just.. " Ah, goddamnit. Dan hoists himself up on his elbows and looks at Arin's closed eyelids. "Look-"

"Did you want me to kiss you?"

Arin's eyes are open now, his head still laid back against the side of the bed and he's looking up at him. Dan wonders if he looks as weird from upside down as Arin does right now.

"I don't know. A little yeah, cause you and Brian seemed so pumped when he proposed it.. and we all were but then we just dropped it and never mentioned it again"

Again, most of the words that had lined up on Dan's tongue, ready to be said and to make the bundle of Dan's thoughts clear to his best friend end up crashing in a heap against his teeth.

Dan flinches a little at his own answer, but Arin's ears take what comes and shrug as Arin's neck strains a little so he can face Danny properly. His expression is inquisitive, but calm as ever.

"Wait is this really bothering you or are we just talking?"

"Well it's.. I don't know, I feel like it's more than just this, maybe"

"Dan, I know you're not completely comfortable with all the gay shit and it's fine, you don't have to feel like you have to do it just because me and Brian or whoever else does it you know?"

"So that's why you didn't do it?"

"What, kiss you? Out there?"

Dan sits all the way up, crossing his legs and looking at the way his sweat pants twist at his knee joints. Arin straightens up too, turning his upper body around towards him, arm resting against Dan's leg. Danny weighs Arin's sentence word for word, and he starts messing with the hem of his pants as he chews on the last two.

"Yeah. It would have been cool for the show, and everybody was on board.. but then we didn't do it and I thought well okay, that's because we never actually rehearsed it, but then I thought maybe we didn't rehearse it because of me and I felt weird about it, you know"

"So you're saying you would be cool with it? With the two of us kissing on stage in front of all those people?"

"It's for the song, of course I would!"

"Dan.."

"Arin, don't patronize me please"

It's jokingly petulant and Arin chuckles before turning further towards Dan.

"Okay, so why didn't you ever do it?"

Aye, there's the rub. Dan did expect this question to pop up sooner or later, he was just avoiding officially answering it up until now, because that would inevitably mean Arin winning the argument. He presses his lips together and scrunches his nose up a little, his head just beginning shake. Arin's face starts to light up vaguely and they speak almost at the same time.

"See?!"

"No! Ar-"

"You didn't because you weren't cool with it!"

"I'm telling you that I am!"

"Dan, it's fine, really, you saw the crowd tonight right? They loved it anyway, who cares if you're uncomfortable with gay shit!"

"Arin, goddamnit, we literally say the gayest shit all the time on the show. We both do"

"Yeah, but that's different though"

"How is that any different"

"Well, cause we're on the show and we're in the right place and nobody's there. Doing it somewhere else.. that's different man"

"As you're saying it, it sounds way worse when we do it on the show. The right place? Nobody's there? That's just.. crazy intimate. Like, so gay"

"Look man, don't fight me on this okay? I know you! I know you wouldn't be cool with it, I don't want you to feel forced into anything"

Dan huffs in defeat and he immediately feels like a teenager trying to win an argument against his dad. Not in the sense that he can't win, but rather that now he has to at least not lose. Whatever that may mean. He flops back down on Arin's bed, and when a couple of seconds pass without neither of them saying anything, he turns his head and looks at Arin. He's still scrolling down his Instagram's feed. Dan looks back up towards the ceiling, mindlessly chewing on his bottom lip so he sounds like he's trying to eat his words back up when he says them.

"Try me dude"

The nape of Arin's neck thumps right next to Dan's forearm, his forehead brushing it.

"What, you wanna make out?"

"No Arin, just.. get up here, do something generically gay. If it's not weird like I don't think it will be.. "

"Then what? We make out?"

"No, Ar- would you stop with the making out please?"

"Alright, then what, Daniel?"

"Well then it means that I win"

It takes a beat for Dan to regret the very last word he just said, but mostly it takes the way Arin's eyebrows climb slowly up his forehead.

" _..win?!_ Oh my god dan"

"What? Oh sure because you're so mature"

"Alright Danny, if you wanna turn this into a competition-"

Arin pushes himself up with a hand on the mattress, his weight making Dan's back dip with it, and within a second he's manouvering himself to lie next to Dan.

"-scoot over, I'll show you how wrong you are"

As soon as he plops down next to him, Arin throws an arm around Dan's ribs and a leg across his knees, passionately sqealing "OH DANIEL" as he tries to squish him as tight as he possibly can in his arms, his nose pushed against Dan's collar bone. Dan's startled "OhmygODARIN" turns into frantic laughter when Arin's scruff brushes against his neck and they both nearly tumble down from the edge of the queen-sized bed.

 

So they huff and puff and giggle together, and Dan can feel Arin's sugar rush in how warm and red his cheeks are, how breathless his laugh sounds. It tingles against Dan's skin with Arin's breath, and when Dan starts to actually pay attention to the energy of it, he realizes that they're already slowing down, and it's inversely proportional to the heat blossoming between their tangled limbs and clothes.

It feels juvenile in a sweaty, excited kind of way, and maybe it's just the very close human contact with a person Dan loves so much and the gig-high and all that, but if Dan had to describe this, he wouldn't say it feels weird, because it doesn't.

When they finally settle down, Arin's left arm has replaced the pillow under Dan's head and his right forearm rests almost parallel to his sternum, all of Dan's fingers curled over it like a scepter, from wrist to elbow. Arin's right leg is somewhere between Dan's, and he rubs their calves together absent mindedly, with Arin's forehead pressed against his shoulder, his hair all over Dan's neck, chin, and lips.  
Dan makes a show of sputtering and blowing his friend's hair off of his face, but his body doesn't disturb their adjustment and neither does the flutter of Arin's chest, vibrating against Dan's bicep as he laughs. Arin pulls his head up then, flicking his hair behind him as he looks Dan in the eye, half of his still warm face tugged up in a smirk. He lays back down when Dan says nothing, just fixes his eyes to the ceiling as he smiles and drums his fingers on Arin's skin.

  
Dan had never thought he could feel so victorious by just cuddling up to someone, and a giggle bubbles up spontaneously on his lips just as Arin very decidedly exhales a hot puff of breath from his nose, like a spent puppy. He mutters against the fabric of Dan's shirt.

 

"So you don't feel weird right now"

"Not really. Why, do you?"

"Nah"

Arin wriggles a little closer and uses his leg to move further up along Dan's body, to level their faces. Dan smells the wave of Sprite blowing across his nostrils before actually feeling Arin's lips brush his cheek. He lingers there for a little while before pressing a kiss just below Dan's cheekbone. At the same time, Dan can feel Arin's loose fist curling tighter where it rests, atop the spot where Dan's collar bones meet. His smile widens and he moves both his legs against Arin's, trapped between them.

"You can try all you want, buddy"

Arin chuckles and Dan gets hit by the whole package: it's Arin's lips and breath on his jaw and his pecs contracting followed by a soulder Dan feels somewhere behind the nape of his neck ad he sees them from where the door is once again, and this time his own body must be almost completely hidden by Arin's. When he shivers, Arin's grin spreads further against Dan's cheek, and he kisses him again, quicker this time, but twice. The second one is longer and Dan feels it in his windpipe as he swallows.

"You cold Dan?"

"Arin come on, you're breathing right on my neck"

"Cause I can come closer y'kno"

"Arin"

There's one last kiss, after which Dan can feel the damp, wide print of lips that indicates that someone -fucking Arin- is mouthing at the lower part of his cheek. He sighs, and to himself he sounds like the safety valve of a pressurized system of some sorts, but he tries his best to make it seem like he's growing bored with all of this.

When Arin moves his forearm Dan's fingers slide down over it, while Arin's start tracing a path up and down the side of Dan's neck, and he knows he's just morally lost this competition: if his whole body felt warm and tingly before, as a result of basic human contact, the roots of Dan's spine are definitely starting to hog the heat right now, with the tip of Arin's nose and his lips mirroring the trail of his fingers on opposide sides of Dan's neck, from his earlobes to his collarbones. But it's not until Arin groans a little against his jugular that Dan breaks the spell.

"Alright this may be starting to feel a tad inappropriate"

Arin's voice is small and his tone could be easily classified as the standard example for "Pillow talk".

"So d'you want me to stop?"

Dan ponders on his options as his fingers draw nothing in particular on Arin's arm. He considers staying, waiting for Arin to call bullshit on this stupid thing or waiting for a boner to come and.. well, Dan doesn't know what that scenario might entail, but he knows you can generally trust a boner to move things forward in some way at least.  
"Alright Arin, you win. I do feel a little weird right now"  
Which doesn't mean he feels.. bad. But Dan keeps that to himself as they disentagle and Arin gives him that smug, patronizing, "told'ya" look.

It's unbearable, and it's Arin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I mean, I don't know if they travel around on an actual, full-on rock star tour bus.. But in my head they do so there we go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, I'll put a bunch of references in the end notes in case anyone's wondering what the hell are all those things I mentioned in this chapter. I'm sorry, I can't help borrowing stuff from things I like! Also, a big, thunderous thanks to NeonDreams for becoming my beta for this fic!

Dan's eyes have been closed for a while now, he doesn't really know how long, but he's not really expecting sleep to come anytime soon.

It's not that he's annoyed at himself for still being awake, though. It's not that jittery, frustrated kind of lack of sleep, the one that feels like a tiny wedge just behind your forehead.

Dan takes a deep breath and makes an effort to really feel his body, how heavy it feels, he focuses on the sharp vibration he feels inside his left cheek, his neck. He's never done it, but he imagines this is how that shit with the hot cups must feel. He brings a hand up, slowly, dragging it all the way up his chest, and trails his fingers along his collarbones, trying to pierce through the fog that already surrounds the memory of what Arin's fingers felt on him. He gets a small, immediate sense of vertigo at how similar and radically different the sensation is. 

His thoughts have been peculiar, these last few months. He's a grown man and he's seen a fair share of things in life, he thinks, and he's not one to get freaked out at whatever his very own mind tells itself. It's one of the very few truly amazing things in life, how one can always surprise oneself, isn't it? 

Dan lets his mind wander in a direction that's become familiar, as of late, and as soon as he feels himself move towards that corner of his imagination, he welcomes the wave of tingles rising from his diaphragm, a tide of soft, heated pressure making his head spin. He's never actually masturbated to these thoughts, but tonight he's not surprised when he feels a pointed spike of pleasure as soon as his other hand slips inside his boxers. 

A grin stretches along his lips as soon as he's finished. He's already made peace with himself and the tiny, cold shards of shame he sometimes felt at random moments of his day, meeting Arin's gaze from across a room when they weren't in each other's spaces. It would take some more time to adjust to the slight shift in his frame of mind, but Dan had no doubt that it would happen. 

If coming to term with his own private fantasies was one thing, doing it with the possibility of having the chance to physically smush his face all over Arin's was.. Well. 

Dan tries to see it, behind his eyelids, for the millionth time. Playful, harmless, silly, dramatic, staged, so fucking hot and sweaty because fucking spotlights and costumes and Arin's hair all over the place and messy cause they would be panting in each other's faces and nOPE.  
There we go again. Goddangit. 

Dan huffs a laugh in the dark, turns on his side. They're gonna have to talk about this, won't they? Ah well. He's asleep within 5 minutes. 

\------

 

Dan's head flops forward even before his eyelids close all the way, and the slight tug it gives his neck makes him snap back up, blinking as rapidly as he can against the weight he feels inside his skull. He dramatically flips the page he's been reading for ten minutes, scolding himself with the indignant noise. It does absolutely nothing to wake him up.

"Dan."

Arin's whisper is lost somewhere midway between the two of them, probably chewed on by the hiccuped buzzing of wheels and engine. 

Dan's head is being half swallowed by the blue curtains by his window pane, so Arin guesses he couldn't have heard it anyway. He can't be sleeping though, judging by the way his forehead keeps thumping against the fabric and plexiglass beneath it with every little bump in the road. Also, he's still holding his book up, eyes closed, brows drawn together. It's comical really. 

"Daan!" 

He shouts-whisper it this time. Dan drags his eyelids open, but he doesn't seem to have heard Arin's call. He does close his book though, without bothering to mark his place and proceeds to fumble around for his ipod. He's just getting that golden, almost-on-the-edge-of-snapping look on his face that Arin absolutely adores when he finally manages to find it and hastily untangle the thin cables of his earbuds, popping them in and instantly shifting into "oh my god this song is better than pouring melted chocolate all over a good fuck" Dan. He leans back his head again, a lazy smile spreading slowly on his lips. Arin watches it turn into a sleepy grin that has also something smug in it, like his best friend is rolling some sort of secret back and forth on his tongue. After a good minute, Arin grabs the wrapping paper of the piece of gum he's chewing from the front pocket of his hoodie, balls it up between his fingers and chucks it at Dan's head. It lands right on his cheek, and exhaustion only serves to make Dan's startlement three times more ridiculous.

"Daniel!" 

"What, Joseph?!" 

Arin hoists himself up on the backrest of his seat a little more, turning around so he can almost fully face Dan, nestled two rows behind him, on the opposite side of the narrow corridor. 

"Whatchu doin buddy?" 

Dan squishes his eyes, the pads of his fingers pushing down and rubbing circles before he pulls his hands behind him and arches his back forward, spine crackling indecently loud in the quiet darkness of the bus. 

"Trying not to fall asleep in these uncomfortable ass seats."

He says it with his eyes still scrunched close, and Arin huffs at how small and cranky he looks, a stark contrast to the way he moved on stage just a couple of hours earlier. It's a kind of magic really. 

"What're you talking about dude, this is the best bus we could possibly have gotten."

"I'm an old man Arin, you could have gotten me.. Fuckin'.. Bus-shaped clouds, and my body would still hate you in the morning if I slept in that."

Dan settles back against the fuzzy cushion of his seat and has to tilt his head back a little, being way too tall to fit perfectly in it, but his eyes stay on Arin. He feels like he wants to say something but speaking might drain the last drops of energy he still has in him, and besides, Arin is so goddamn far away. As soon as he's finished forming the thought, he hears Arin moving around, settling his laptop down on his seat as he makes his way towards Dan's.

"Scoot over twig, imma help you stay up."

"How dare you?! I'm a perfectly decent sized.. young tree. At least. Ah forget it. Don't YOU wanna get some sleep though?" 

"Neh, I can't really sleep on cars or buses or whatever. I just don't switch off." 

"Oh right, I've never actually seen you sleep on moving things."

"Well technically the earth is moving, so."

"I- uh, well, touché dude." 

Dan's voice sloshes around them both like heated up honey, and Dan himself hears the lack of a good couple of hours of sleep in it. He also thinks he knows where those hours went, and laughs internally at how surreal it feels to look Arin in the eyes as he recalls that. 

Arin stares at Dan as he fumbles with his words for a moment, then shakes his head around, flapping his hair in Dan's face and getting a half assed punch to the shoulder in return. 

As they settle down again, he gently snatches one earbud out of Dan's ear, which he doesn't seem to mind at all, and plugs it into his own. He immediately pulls the most ridiculously fake shocked face he can muster, one graceful hand spreading on his chest to manifest his utter disbelief. As he theatrically draws a high pitched gasp, Dan is already giggling and slightly turning his upper body towards him, looking down as the corners of his eyes crinkle. 

"Is this -modern- music I am hearing Daniel?!" 

Dan opens his eyes just a crack, still smiling, the tiniest bit of a blush fading from his cheekbones, before he straightens his back and looks back at Arin.

"It might shock you but I'm not the deformed child of an anvil and dated pop music." 

"Well jesus Dan now that you said that I kinda wish you were." 

"I should be sleep deprived all the time, I would put fucking Paul Verlaine to shame.. I mean, more than he already did himself."

"Can you honestly blame him? Young Leo can have me make a fool of myself anytime dude."

"Woah Arin have you seriously seen that film?" 

"Why, you think I would otherwise know who fucking Paul whatshisface is??" 

"Well, you just had me say touchè twice in the span of like one minute. You're on fire tonight my friend."

"Damn right I am, Twiggy Stardust." 

Dan trips over an unexpected burst of laughter he hears coming from himself before the natural reflex of responding to whatever Arin is saying has a chance to kick in. He wonders If he'll ever stop wondering if Arin's actually a genius or if he's too easily impressed.

"Wow. Really Arin."

"Could have gone with Twiggy Pop but you strike me more like a sparkling alien than a promiscuous lizard for some reason."

"Welly you can call me Twiggy.. Impressed, big cat. Which is not as clever but you get the idea"

Arin looks down for a second, smiling to himself as the song in their ears fades to a finish.

"Call ME impressed dude, didn't expect you to be listening to fucking Starboy." 

"I guess it's pretty fitting for Twiggy Stardust." 

There's amused spite in Dan's mumble, and he snorts at Arin before quietly lying back, eyes half lidded and his lips pressed together, letting his head rock from side to side with the slow rhythm of the next song. Arin fumbles with the hem of his hoodie before he absent-mindedly starts bouncing his closed fist on Dan's leg. Moving his arm, he realizes how their shoulders have been touching this entire time without him even noticing. 

"Stay with me Dan."

He gets a grunt in response that vaguely sounds like "m'wake", but he doesn't take his fist back. 

"It's really 'you' though, now that I think about it. This song is really fucking sexy."

"All music that I allow into my brain is fucking sexy as shit, Arin." 

Arin's laughter bubbles out of him and tumbles in their laps before a fuzzy silence settles again, broken only by the cotton-y sound of Dan's hair moving with his head against the backrest. Arin shoots a quick glance at his friend before speaking softly.

"Hey Dan, can I ask you something?"

"What's up?"

"I mean I know that our demographic is not exactly within your ideal moral range.. But like, I've never ever seen you, you know, doing the stereotypical musician thing of picking up groupies." 

"Well.. I mean what's your question man?"

"Mnnnidunno, like, why? Doesn't it sound awesome to you?" 

"Oh, I've never been a groupie-man. I dunno, I mean.. I just never felt like that. I guess. I don't know, I never really thought about it, you know. It's just.. We have fun on tour, and maybe I've just never needed.. -more- fun than the fun that I was already having. Ya feel? And then sometimes we pass next to some old friends of mine who don't mind getting down and dirty so there's that.. But yeah I see where you come from. These tours are long as shit if you think about it."

"Yeah man, that's a long ass time to be on the road." 

In the pause after Arin's words, Dan replays the same song they just listened to and uses the press of his thumb on the tiny metal object in his hands to muster up a sense of courage that's just as tiny.

"You um.. D'you miss Suzy?"

Arin turns his head to look at Dan with mildly puzzled amusement on his face and he laughs a little as he answers.

"I mean, of course I miss her man. It's nice to be on the road with you and everybody and just, fuckin, doing stupid shit and amazing shows and all that.. But I -am- starting to miss her.. A little bit, if you get what I'm saying."

"Is that why you asked me why I don't pick up groupies? You think I'm wasting my fortunes man?"

"Well of course if you say it like that it sounds kinda wrong but yeah I mean.." 

Arin turns towards Dan a little bit and looks him in the eye with what he hopes is the clearest look he can manage. 

"Alright don't take this the weird way, but I have sort of been imagining a different tour life that you would be having before we took off."

"You mean you spent some of your time thinking about me.. Fucking people on tour."

"Well yeah I guess you could say that." 

Dan has to take a moment to himself and applaude Arin's natural talent at making this sound so damn easy. Then he gives it a go.

"Sorry to be a disappointment dude."

"Not weird then?"

"I mean, it's a little weird alright, but I think about weird shit all the time." 

This is it. It's the moment. Dan can feel it throbbing in his stomach, ready to crawl out, solid like the knowledge that he's probably gonna cross a boundary, vague like the feeling that they're the only ones still awake under the dimmed blue neon lights that illuminate the bus's central corridor. 

"..I mean who could blame you for missing Suzy, right?" 

He says it too slowly, confidence steadily starting to drain away towards the end of his sentence. Arin's face still looks more amused than anything else. Being laughed at sounds a million times better than being.. Dan doesn't even want to finish the thought. And besides, he's got the ball rolling, can't turn back now.

"Uh.. you got something you wanna tell me Dan?"

The way Arin looks at him is a mixture of curiosity, confusion and just Arin's natural openness, and Dan thinks that at this point he just might as well. It's a blessing that sleepiness is one of the mightiest "fuck it" agents of them all. 

"It's one of the weird things I was talking about. I too have been imagining things before we started this tour.."

Confusion slowly starts to recede from Arin's face as he blinks a little faster than usual. Dan watches the way his chest rises and falls under the plain black t-shirt he's wearing. 

"..I swear I know how creepy this sounds okay? But I mean you're such a perfect couple and you got matching freaking hair and like the soulmate thing going on and, I don't know, I just like to think that there's such a beautiful thing in the world right? And you guys are in my life too! And I mean, you're my best friend and I'm around you all the time so, I don't know I just started having these thoughts and.. Am I totally creeping you out?"

Arin is silent for a bit, but even though his expression hasn't turned into supreme disgust or horror, Dan can't seem to be able to slow the hard and fast thump of his heartbeat inside his temples just yet. 

"D'you think it's a thing friends do? Imagining each other boning people?"

Dan looks at Arin and his face matches the sincerity he hears in the question somehow, his features relaxed, heavy with how late it is. 

"I guess. Don't you randomly wonder how your friends look like when they're boning, sometimes?" 

"Oh yeah totally. All the time. I love having Ross' pale ass right in front of my mind's eye."

They both giggle, and the implication makes its way to Dan's brain through the veil of sarcasm, bringing back that small sense of vertigo and surrealism that comes with associating Arin to these kind of feelings, these situations. It's like waking up and breathing consciously after a lung transplant: it feels foreign, but it's vital. It's basic.

When they share a look again, Dan is not entirely sure the music choice was appropriate, but he presses the replay button all the same. Arin's fist has loosened up, still resting just above his knee, and when Dan looks at it, Arin spreads a little further down his seat, adjusting. His leg bumps into Dan's and he leaves it there as he bounces his heel with the beat, his shin rhythmically brushing Dan's. 

Arin hears Dan swallow beside him, his ear right at his throat level, and he turns around to look at the jut of Dan's adam's apple. Arin can see on the corner of his eye Dan looking right back at him and manages to hide the tension he's starting to feel at the mouth of his stomach. His eyes flicker up to Dan's and he lets his lips curl into a small smile, mirroring his friend's. They're in it together, in this little shroud of awkwardness. Arin knows what his body's telling him about himself and Dan's reactions, but it still makes his chest tingle to not be totally sure, not voicing it. He wonders if maybe he should, if it wouldn't be best to poke the bubble and see if it's thick enough to hold on to their two seats or if it's gonna give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So they basically listen to Starboy and then Wicked Games, both by the Weeknd. The film they mention is Total Eclipse, sort of a biography of the relationship between Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud (played by David Thewlis and super young Leonardo di Caprio). Very obvious word play on twig and Ziggy Stardust/Iggy Pop. I had to. That's about it, hope you enjoyed and don't be afraid to leave some feedback!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I like the one where I write about them making out for a loooooooooong time when it would actually take place in a real time span of like two minutes.

Arin wants to say something about this, about the tension, but he really really can't. And to him, that's a sign that something is really going on, because he can usually tell dan anything he has to, no hesitation. But this time.. There's this, like, solid fucking barrier that's stopping him. The more he approaches it, spurring his mind on, telling himself that he's gonna speak up in a moment, the more nervous he gets, and words just don't come. He can almost physically feel himself hitting the wall of nothing. But he can't let this.. Whatever this is, just pass by. He doesn't want to.  
And it takes Arin an enormous effort, so much that he has to close his eyes for a second, to make his fist unravel, wrist rotating slowly like a rusty gear until his palm is spread flat above Dan's knee.

Then Arin opens his eyes, unfocused and scared, and he's a little shocked to recognize the back of his hand, to see that all the colors still look the same around him. He also feels a little dumb, and when he breathes in he smells tour bus and Dan, and connects it to the solid warmth of Dan's leg under his fingers, the stale mint under his own teeth. 

Dan can see that Arin is kinda struggling. He feels super weird, and Arin apparently does too.  
When Arin's fingers curl around the top of his knee, Dan does his best to keep his breath from hitching, (because that would be lame as fuck), and its easier than he anticipated.  
Somehow, even in this situation, Arin's discomfort makes him naturally steadier, slips him into the role of the pacifier. He's the giggles to Arin's fury, and as it turns out he's also the pleased smile to Arin's nerves.

Dan waits another moment, but all Arin does is stare at the back of the seat in front of him and take slow, steady breaths, his head slightly inched towards Dan. 

"Ar."

Dan can see Arin's irises adjust to put his face in focus and for a second he wishes they could just shut up and look at each other, like they do before a session sometimes. For another, weirder second, he wishes he had a tiny sun to shine into Arin's eyes so he could see how the color would flare up and his pupils would shrink. Fortunately Arin makes a sound and takes him back to the dim lit reality they're in. 

"Hm?"

"Would it be weird if I said that I kind of want to rehearse the kiss so we can do it on stage too?" 

Arin's face shows no signs of turbulence whatsoever, but maybe it's because he already was in shock from how slightly out of frame the situation feels. Like he's a character in one of those stories where the guy looks at a picture on the wall and it looks crooked to him, but nobody else can see it. And then it turns out he's the one that's been crooked the whole time.  
Arin's brain immediately tells him that if he voiced the thought out loud, Dan would probably argue that the guy wouldn't just be seeing the picture as crooked, but everything else too, thus making the crookedness default to him and just not noticeable. The cheeky fucking smartass.  
Arin's still smiling to himself when he finally answers. 

"Nah man, I mean. I AM a little worried how it may be received now that we're already a couple of shows in, but I still think it's an awesome idea."

Somewhere towards the end of the sentence, he starts drumming his fingers on Dan's leg, but as he looks at him Dan doesn't believe Arin's aware of it. His own voice comes out way breathier than he intends it to be.

"Cool! Huh.. Good thing you're chewing gum then I guess."

"Wait you mean right now?"

"Well yeah I mean.. No one's here to see how bad the first one's gonna be at least."

Arin wiggles his eyebrows at him, his eyes tired and his smile jokingly flirty

"The first one huh?"

Dan cant help the laughter breaking his "shut up" apart. Arin, in turn, does shut up, but he doesn't take his eyes off Dan, small smirk still playing on his lips.

"Alright then."

"You sure? I don't wanna be the one pushing YOU into some gay thing you don't wanna do."

"Dan, it's fine. I'm way more immune to this than you are."

Dan manages to gain about two inches on the distance that separates him from Arin's face before he apparently steps on a mine and the explosion comes out as a snort of laughter. Arin cracks up too, his face warming as he tries to stitch together a "come on dude". He tightens his grip on Dan's leg just a little, squeezing once in what he hopes feels like reassurance, because Dan's hilarity sounds vaguely nervous to him.

When Dan finally brings his gaze back to Arin's, they're both still sort of smiling, their heads a little closer, and Dan realizes he involuntarily already started tilting his head to the right. He wants to say something but his resolve catches on the slope of Arin's nose, and how he never noticed it was so straight before.  
Arin's voice is low when he speaks.

"Should I go to the left?"

He sounds casual, easy, like he can see Dan's struggle and enjoy it as he prods him. 

Dan nods and uses the motion to get closer still, angling his forehead further to the right as Arin tentatively leans to the left.  
Unexpectedly, surprising himself too in the process, Dan springs forward with both his eyes and lips closed tight, planting a strained kiss on Arin's mouth, whose surprise comes in the form of a muffled "Mmph!" before Dan is already pulling back off. 

"Dude! Give a guy some warning!" 

Arin shout-whispers, then immediately starts giggling at Dan's mildly panicked expression. He clears his throat lightly, wiggles in his seat a little until his thigh is completely pressing into Dan's, then slowly gets closer to him again, thumb rubbing back and forth and feather-light on Dan's jeans, his other hand coming up to card through his own hair, shoving them back. His hand stops, on its way down, to rest on Dan's shoulder.

Arin bumps their noses together once and a strand of hair falls against his cheek. His gaze flickers towards it then crawls to Dan's nose, but they're so close that his eyes slightly cross and Dan can't help the breathy laugh that escapes him. Everything is impossibly quiet as Arin scans the warmth of Dan's features, the lazy way his eyelids slide open again, the tip of his tongue pushing behind his teeth.  
Arin is still looking down at his friend's mouth when he feels Dan's fingers combing the loose strand of hair behind his ear and it makes him automatically lean into the touch and forward, Dan's hand settling between his neck and collarbone at the same moment their lips meet. 

Arin inhales as he lingers against Dan's mouth for a good three seconds, then Dan pulls back just enough so he can reposition to catch Arin's lower lip between his.  
The tip of their noses touch again as they move apart, and their laughter is short and euphoric this time, like they've just jumped down from something that turned out to be not as high as they thought it would be. 

Dan's hand drags a little over Arin's chest as it comes up to Dan's face. He presses the back of it to his mouth, incredulous, keeping his eyes on Arin as he licks along the edge of his lower lip.

"Dude you look so fucking weird up close like that!"

"Shut up Arin you don't know what it's like to have full on facial hair.. Fucking rasping all over your face!"

Arin could go on joking, he knows that somewhere in the back of his head, but he doesn't really want to. His smile is hazy, he can feel it on his own face. 

"Alright c'mere."

Dan's a little stiffer than before, and Arin stops just a couple inches short from his face. 

"Open your mouth a little this time."

"Oh so just because I didn't make out with you the other night you wanna take advantage of me now?"

"I- no, Dan, it's because-"

Arin lifts both his hands to punctuate the seriousness of his argument.

"It's- I just feel like we're in middle school, with that closed mouth soft brush bullshit. It makes it weirder"

Dan could joke, ask Arin how does an innocent peck out-weird a passionate, rapturous make out session, but he can't bring himself to do it. 

"So you're a.. Like, right away-aggressive-sloppy-kiss kinda guy?"

"I guess. I mean, not aggressive like ASSAULTING YOU but you know, I'm an adult and I'm more comfortable with.. Adult situations."

Arin's hand doesn't go back to his friend's knee, instead this time he uses it to angle Dan's cheek, sweeping his thumb against slightly stubbly skin, index finger slotting right behind the shell of his ear, the others curling around his neck.  
Dan feels a rush of adrenaline as he parts his lips against Arin's, feeling the damp slide of something warm against his bottom lip.  
When he actually meets the tip of Arin's tongue with his, Dan exhales from his nose and suddenly realizes he has no idea what you're supposed to do with your hands when you're a guy and you're kissing another guy. He barely has the time to feel dizzy at the notion that he's actually kissing a guy before Arin breaks away to speak, and the wet sound of it makes Dan want to go right back in. 

"Is it okay?"

"Yeah. Better?"

"Much."

Dan adjusts so he's facing his friend a little better and he feels him smirk into the next kiss when he tentatively rests one of his hands on Arin's chest.  
Dan pulls back just enough so he can whisper against the side of Arin's mouth, their heads still tilted and complementary.

"Don't laugh at me dude, I don't know what to do with my hands."

"Aren't you supposed to be, like, the best lover alive? Was that all bullshit?" 

"I-you're not a girl, man!"

"Then pretend I am."

Dan is about to answer, but something in what Arin says and the completely conversational tone of it freezes him right where he is. He swallows, his spit-slick lips warming in waves with every breath Arin lets out.

"Do to me what you would to a girl."

"Yeah but you're gonna be the 'guy' in the song."

"Dan just- shut up and do it."

Arin's the one to go for it first though, but this time he finds Dan firmer against him, opening up and slipping his tongue in Arin's mouth with confidence. Dan screws his eyes shut tighter, momentarily shoving aside all the signs telling him that this is ARIN, so he can physically get into the groove of the kiss and show his true, sexy-ass colours. He fists Arin's shirt with the hand he has on his chest and brings the other one up to slide around Arin's neck so he can tilt his head back and deepen the kiss, making Arin exhale with it.

Arin's back relaxes into the seat as he breathes out through his nose and he gently pulls Dan along with him, tugging him forward. He opens his mouth more and circles Dan's tongue, both of his hands sliding on his shirt to settle just below his ribs, and Dan's inhale is a little sharper, his upper body surging forward. 

They kiss in waves of carefully licking into each other and breaking apart for a beat, each time a little steadier, a little more familiar, and every time he pulls off Dan can hear it and smell it all, so he dives head first into the pure sensory components of what he's doing, letting them gradually drown and soothe the cognitive sense of alarm attached to the notion of making out with his best friend.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddamn university won't let me tend to important stuff (such as this) goddangit. Sorry about the extreme lateness. Also, guess we're almost there, almost sexytimes time. Woohoo.

It takes Arin a little while to realize there's music in his head coming from the earbud he still has on, his brain foggy with the way Dan's fingers are playing with his hair where it lands over Arin's collarbones, how Dan keeps tugging on his lower lip every so often, making Arin lean into him the tiniest bit. He vaguely wonders if Dan isn't trying to suggest something, then tentatively tries doing the same, biting Dan's lip a little awkwardly. Arin feels the rest of Dan's mouth curve up under his teeth and a huff of laughter, so he swallows it with another wider, only slightly resented kiss, running his tongue against the spit-slick roughness of the hint of stubble crowning Danny's mouth.

 

A bump in the road knocks their foreheads together and Arin feels his nose mash into Dan's cheekbone, a clang of teeth against teeth before they're pulled apart by the motion of the bus readjusting, muffled grunts coming from both of them. Dan rubs circles at the spot where they collided, laughing, dizzy, jarred by how cold the air he's breathing feels against everything below his nose. When he looks over at Arin, he's chuckling low in his throat, head tipped back against the seat. The neon lights reflect on his damp lips and his neck stretches, pale and vaguely pulsing with every beat of his heart. Dan doesn't mean to swallow as soundly as he does, and the noise coming from his throat calls Arin's gaze to his adam's apple, making Dan's blush deepen, now visible even in the semi-obscurity. He cuts through the silence before it officially becomes a problem.

 

"Boy.. That might be a little too sexual for the stage maybe. Juuuuust maybe though."

 

Arin is looking right at him the whole time through.

 

"Dude, I haven't even taken ANY of your clothes off!"

 

“First of all, I believe I would be the one to do that.. "

 

Dan is about to trail off, to let the bus' rumbling swallow the rest of his thought, but it's his best friend he's talking to, and they've said way more compromising things to each other. And there's their shoulders still pressed so close together and the phantom of Arin's hands on him and the quiet all around and the way Arin's voice vibrates against his eardrums when it's so damn close and all of Dan's obscure fantasies right there behind the corner of this side of reality. He fixes his eyes on the joint between Arin's neck and collarbones.

 

"And, well, a few more minutes of that and I might have let you, man, you can really.. uh.."

 

"So I'm told man, so I'm told."

 

Arin's head is bent forwards, so he has to shoot Dan a sideways look and Dan can't really read his expression, but his grin looks sleepy and almost conspirational for a few moments, before he goes back to gazing ahead of him and it slowly morphs into an unsure one. Arin breaks the transition in half by clearing his throat and muttering a vague “Lemme just..”, his knuckles brushing Dan's stomach as he picks up the iPod in his lap, hitting pause before starting to nose through Dan's playlists.

 

The insides of both their skulls go silent after what seems like a whole day of music, of numbing thoughts out, and to Dan it feels impressively like when your body forces you to sober up because something important has come up and you can't be a drunken idiot anymore, even if your brain's still swimming in acetaldehyde and all you want to do is waddle back into stupidity's arms. Again, he speaks because the openness he sees in Arin's eyes makes him sense an impending realization he'd much rather delay just a bit longer.

 

"Um.. Arin I'm not sure this would be a good idea. Bringing this on stage I mean."

 

Arin slowly straightens up, his eyebrows vaguely rising. Dan's cheeks twitch with a small smile before he goes on.

 

"I know I was the one proposing we tried, but.. I dunno-"

 

"Yeah"

 

Their eyes meet when Arin quietly interrupts him, arching his back forward, groaning as his spine cracks twice. As he settles down again, Dan notices how close they still are, thighs and shoulders stitched together, how tingly his body feels. In the brief pause Arin takes to say what he has to, Dan catches himself thinking that he can still somehow _smell_ the kiss, wondering if Arin can too. He also tells himself that he needs to chill before the muddy panic inside his chest starts to show. Arin's voice grounds him a little when it comes, slow but apparently devoid of the jitters Dan hears woven in his own thoughts.

 

"Yeah, I was about to say so too. I dunno, feels like it would have to have been there from the beginning or not at all, y'know?"

 

Dan simply hums his agreement, his chest tight with the certainty that this thin veil of tension that's just starting to float above them is only gonna get thicker if they don't diffuse it sooner rather than later. Another thing Dan is positive about is that now, _right now_ would be the absolute best moment to do so, to show Arin that he's still that pacifier, _his_ pacifier, that their dynamic is intact and they can both be the humour to this shared, crippling doubt.

Dan is aware in the back of his head that the bus is slowing down and Arin is staring at his iPod's screen and the occasion is slipping through his metaphorical, dumbass fingers, but no matter how hard he tries to push words out, _any_ words out.. they just won't come.

 

 

\----------

 

 

It's half past one in the morning, and Dan feels caffeinated. He blames it on the awful can of energy drink he downed before the show: as it turns out, his body just didn't agree with that stuff. He also blames it on Arin for practically making him try it.  
  
Dan had spent most of his previous night in a semi-conscious state, but he somehow hadn't managed to do any useful thinking in regard of what had happened between him and his best friend, long hours in the darkness only amounting to Dan feverishly wondering what Arin was doing, alone in his own room, if he too was chasing after the phantom feeling of uncertain hands on him, of knees brushing together, wet sounds bursting like bubbles in the tight air. He wondered if Arin, too, was twitching in his boxers, trying to imagine what Dan would sound like, arms pinned above his head, Arin's tongue trailing downwards along his neck.

  
The next day, snapshots of skin and sweat and moans had been flashing in technicolor behind Dans eyelids as he stared right into Arin's eyes, coexisting with him like he always did. Almost.  
  
Dan had been feeling woozy and deflated for the whole day, coming from a long night of almost no sleep. He'd hated it for the most part, being aware somewhere in his hazy brain that it was preventing him from genuinely and fully enjoying the city they were in and the general pre-performance atmosphere. On the other side, sleep deprivation had served to numb just the perfect amount of his nerves, allowing him to not avert his droopy eyes whenever Arin caught Dan staring at him. As spaced out as Dan was, his reflexes probably wouldn't have caught up with it anyway.  
  
Being sleepy felt almost as dangerous as being drunk, Dan realizes now as he relives the moment that led him to chug that can of Satan's spit: he had seen Arin take a swig from one, partly turned away from him, his hair whipping back and his throat shifting around the mouthful. It had been almost comical, how Dan immediately felt thirsty too, his body too tired to bother separating the vague sense of lust from other basic stimuli it was getting from the scene. Dan had walked up to his friend without a second thought, laid his forehead between Arin's shoulder blades and groaned weakly before breathing in as hard as he could against familiar flannel.  
Now, the only way he'd find to describe his behavior would be flirty. In an endearingly embarrassing 15-year-old kind of way which Arin was probably laughing at, that is.

  
Dan had made a move to snatch the drink out of Arin's hand, but he'd dodged without difficulty, bending down and coming back up with an unopened can for Dan.  
  
"What, are you afraid I'll give you hepC or something?!"  
  
The look Arin gave him then was amused but distinctly charged, his lips moving as if to say something.  
  
"Might be a little too late for that man"  
  
His voice, though, came only after he had already halfway turned away from Dan, quiet, like he was talking more to himself than anyone else. Not that Dan couldn't perfectly hear him anyway.  
  
  
It's now a quarter to 2 am, and Dan grabs his phone from his night stand, head swimming in clay.  
  
"Dude. You up?"  
  
Dan lays his phone on his stomach. Two minutes later, his diaphragm buzzes.  
  
"*smirking emoji*"  
  
"Come hang out?"  
  
"I haven't shaved tho"  
  
Dan scrunches his brows, eyes squinting at the artificial light and his own confusion.  
  
"???"  
  
"This is very clearly a booty call Daniel smh"  
  
Dan half giggles Arin's name and starts muttering his response out loud instead of typing an answer, proceeding to immediately feel very stupid.  
  
"Sure, if that's what you need to tell yourself buddy. Anyway door's open if you wanna hang out. I'm boooooooored"  
  
As soon as Arin reads the message, the 'online' under his name vanishes,  and Dan doesn't get an answer for the following 6 minutes. Only Arin's reply comes in the form of a knock, rather than a soft buzz. If Dan needed to feel more like a lame, scrawny tween, he would have checked himself out in the reflection of his phone's screen before scrambling off his bed and going to let Arin in. Which he totally totally doesn't, of course.  
  
Arin lifts a hand up in greeting, standing in Dan's doorway with an iPad tucked under his other arm. The silhouette of a lollipop bulges from his right cheek, muffling his words as Dan steps aside to let him through. He smells candy-lemon as Arin passes him by.  
  
"Yo. Wanna watch Alien?"  
  
"Sure man"  
  
Dan's mind automatically loads a joke about Arin constantly having things in his mouth, but it feels forced as it bounces off the walls of his skull, being greeted in his very head only by nervous laughter. He heads back to his bed instead, not even bothering to tell Arin to make himself comfortable or whatever, seeing that he's already climbing on the right side, opposite to where Dan usually sleeps. He wonders if Arin actually thought about that, if he could even have known.  
  
They sit up with their backs against the headboard, pillows like a bridge across their laps to support the iPad, lollipop shifting between Arin's cheeks every few seconds.

 

  
20 minutes in and Dan's neck is sore, Arin squirms to try and change position without actually changing it and Dan is hyper aware of every single sound their bodies and clothes are making.

"Alright Dan fucking pause it for a minute"

Dan's answer gets delayed by the clink of hard candy against Arin's teeth as he speaks.

"As if we both don't already know what's gonna happen"

"What's gonna happen is I'm gonna snap this iPad's neck if I don't change position right fucking now"

"Alright, jeez!"

One of the pillows ends up being shoved only in Dan's lap, another one tucked under Arin's head as he lays on his side. Dan scoots a little lower so both of them can see the screen, and he unpauses the movie.

"Now I can't see shit"

"Arin, swear to god"

"Nonono stay where you are"

Arin pushes his pillow back, leans on his right elbow and wriggles until his head levels with Dan's side. He looks up at Danny while he fumbles to get a side of the pillow to rest against Dan's ribs so he can rest his head there in turn, but Dan stops him and pushes the fabric back underneath his back. Arin looks at him like he can see right through what Dan is doing, whatever that may be, like he's acting out a scene even before Danny can give him any direction. Dan follows his fingers as he pulls the considerably smaller lollipop out for a second, then pops it back in without a word.

"What? You're gonna be fucking with that pillow again in, like, two seconds, so just lay on me"

Arin huffs, still leaning on his elbow so his shoulders move with it, channeling the motion to Dan's middle like a small quake. He sees the crossroads Dan's words have put in front of him, and he takes the milder way. For now.

"On your bony ass ribs?"

"That's right baby"

They probably both realize the discomfort of the arrangement as soon as Arin lays his head against Dan's side, and they manage to endure it for a good minute before Dan scoots all the way down and Arin's cheek ends up pressing against his chest, jaw dragging on his shirt when he mumbles, tone low and flat.

"Bet you wanted to be my pillow so I could be fucking with you too you kinky bastard"

Arin's head bounces with Danny's laughter and he smiles to himself, listening to his friend settle down slowly. Dan inhales and exhales, deep and long, his hands laced behind his nape. He waits another thirty seconds of Arin quietly breathing against him before he untangles them, letting his left arm fall somewhere slightly above his friends shoulders. He hears Arin snort softly somewhere beneath him.

"Should have yawned?"

"At least"

Arin lets his left arm plop down on Dan's stomach, as if being purposefully indelicate would make it less awkward. It doesn't, but he guesses he's the one who's better off, without his best friend laying his ear directly over his own fast-beating heart. Dan's chest thumps deep and steady, and Arin adjusts his head so he's pressed right against it. He absent-mindedly drums his fingers against Dan, clamping his teeth down on the candy in the broad quiet of the room, making Dan jump a little.

"Woah, Arin, jesus!"

"What? I thought you liked biting dude"

Dan can't see Arin's face. His voice sounds teasing as ever, but there's a softness to it that feels like caution a little bit, like he's testing the field. He's giving Dan the choice to drop this, which Dan realizes he wants to, but also really doesn't.

"So we're talking about this?"

Arin takes a breath that's a little deeper than the ones before or the ones after it, the hand on Dan's stomach shifting halfway down to his navel, like an afterthought.

"D'you want to?"

"I'm not really sure I 'want' to, but it feels like something we should.. Work out, maybe"

"Okay"

Arin pats Dan's chest once before rolling over. They're both on their backs, staring at the dark ceiling.  
A tide of adrenaline rushes through Dan's body, lighting fast and electric, out of nowhere, and his sense of reality trembles for a second, like it always does when he's about to confess something that doesn't sit completely well with him yet.

"I jerked off thinking about you a couple times"

Arin turns his head on the pillow, eyeing Dan in silence. Dan can tell because he hears Arin's hair moving against fabric and he's dying to know what Arin's eyes look like right now, but his neck won't obey the frantic commands coming from his brain.

"Nice way to lead into the conversation dude"

"Does it freak you out?"

"Well, yeah, a little bit.. But I mean, that kiss wasn't exactly innocent was it? I kinda figured.. Y'know"

Dan finally manages to look at his best friend, angling more his eyes than his head towards Arin.

"Right. So.. What about you?"

Arin's laughter is soft, high pitched and aimed towards the ceiling once again, his fingers entwined above his navel.

"I dreamt about you, the night we kissed. Like, I dreamt a bunch of different stuff, but you were in them all-"

Something warm stirs inside Dan's chest as he watches Arin smile to himself. It's one of the most dystopian situation he's ever found himself in.

"-and then.. I dunno, I guess I started looking at you a little differently when we're on stage."

They look at each other and Dan's mouth tugs up in a half smirk, Arin smiling at him with a fondness that's not really supposed to be sexy, but sends a shiver down Dan's arms nonetheless.

Dan rolls closer, on his side, and Arin unconsciously follows the movement, adjusting so he's facing him better. Dan moves in slowly, the muscles and tendons in his neck vibrating with how hard his heart is beating. Their lips meet almost in slow motion, and their eyes are half lidded so they can still see each other, like they want to dissect the act, know what it all looks like up close. Dan breaks the bubble of intensity bringing his right hand up to touch Arin's cheek, closing his eyes and adjusting his lower lip between Arin's. The next thing he feels is a deep exhale coming from the nose brushing his own, and Arin's body going slack apart from his neck and jaw, working to get their faces as close as possible.  Dan opens his mouth and he wants to be all sexy and drag his tongue along Arin's lip, but he finds another tongue instead and a thrill blooms in his chest like he went to take the last step of a stairwell but landed straight on the floor instead. 

This time, Arin's facial hair is everywhere. Dan is aware of it under his lips, slightly scratching against his own skin, the tip of his nose. When he inhales, he smells saliva but he also smells Arin and his brain tries to wrap around the undeniable simplicity of it but then Arin sucks on his tongue and it all just adds to the maelstrom of weirdness because his best friend is making him painfully aware of how much this feels more like heated foreplay than.. Well, than anything else he's felt in a while honestly.

 

Arin knows he's getting too lost in the feeling of it, chasing Dan's breath when they part, swirling his tongue around Danny's and arching his body into his very male friend so as not to break contact even for two whole seconds, not even when Dan fumbles to get the remaining pillow and iPad out of his way, to not give either of them the chance to get enough oxygen into their brains to maybe think this through for a moment. 

 

Arin might come across as a little eager, that's true, but it's only because he knows he's a fairly competent kisser, and because discovering what makes Dan go frantic and breathless is a fascinating thing. He doesn't realize the implication that might be passed across by sucking on Dan's tongue, but before he has time to feel anything about it, Dan is closing in, hoisting his torso on top of Arin's, one leg slotting between his knees, and there are suddenly careful long fingers trailing down from his cheek, along his neck, curling at the base of it, not squeezing, just there, right over his pulse. Arin's hands are shaky when he slides them up Dan's sides, one of them going around to his lower back, the other all the way up to his nape, combing through the mess of his hair. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does this chapter feel unfinished to you too? It's because it is!   
> Tune in with ch 5 where I'll tackle my first gay, steamy, under-the-belt thing. Halleluja.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many times can Sara say 'balls' before it starts sounding weird? Let's find out!

"Ar"

 

He has to clear his throat before speaking, and the warmth of Dan's hand is still there to wrap around the sound, and Arin's a little more than surprised at how worked up that feeling gets him. 

 

"Yeah?"

 

"Can I try something?"

 

Dan is not quite whispering, but his voice is so low and close it makes Arin's skin raise in goosebumps, though they could also come from the fact that he hasn't been so nervous in an intimate situation in a decade probably. 

 

The hand at the base of Arin's neck starts slowly moving downwards, over Arin's chest and all the way to the spot where his shirt has ridden up to expose the lower part of his belly, and Danny follows it with his eyes. 

 

"Um.. If this is not.. You know- just tell me, okay?"

 

When Dan's fingers brush naked skin, Arin licks his lips and closes his own fingers into a loose fist in Dan's curls, tugging him back into a kiss at the same time Dan's hand comes to a stop over the vague bulge in Arin's fleece pants. He moves it so his palm covers what he thinks is the shaft of Arin's dick and tentatively squeezes, thumb rubbing back and forth over cloth that feels way too warm and the shape of something so familiar and so incredibly alien at the same time. 

Arin has stopped kissing him and is just mouthing at his cheek now, his breath a steady puff of steam, a stutter in it when Dan finally finds the courage to touch him properly, firmly, like he does to himself when he wants to get things going. 

The hand Arin has on Dan's lower back slides underneath the back of his t-shirt, fingers digging in the flesh between his hipbone and ribs, and there's the wet shadow of teeth under Dan's jaw. 

 

Dan presses the heel of his palm against Arin's growing erection and grinds it downwards until he reaches the spot where his own thigh straddles Arin's, just under his crotch. He moves so he can run his fingers on Arin's inner thigh, before nudging his legs apart some more. From there, he goes to cup Arin's balls but he has to fight against the fabric of his sweatpants and the shakiness of his own hand and suddenly his nerves are _really_  hitting him and this seems like the funniest thing that's ever happened to him, but all he can manage is a choked huff of laughter and a "Dude, I can't find your balls". 

 

Arin chuckles too and he can hear the tightness in both their voices. When he mumbles "Here, wait-" against the side of Dan's neck, his friends hand goes still and he lifts it carefully from between Arin's legs like someone's got a gun to his head. 

Arin disentangles his left hand from Dan's hair and brings it down between their bodies, grabbing his friend's hand on its way and bringing them both back to the insistent heat of his dick. He presses Dan's hand down, sucking his own lips into his mouth, pushes it downwards while he carefully lifts his hips up a little bit so his pants can bunch up around the joint between his thighs and hips, so Dan's fingers can completely wrap around his balls. 

 

Dan watches his hand, still covered by Arin's, in fascination and curiously squeezes the first pair of balls (that's not his own) he's ever touched. They're different from what he knows, not in a definite quality like size or shape, but he doesn't have the time to inspect the feeling because Arin is groaning softly into his left ear and Dan realizes his hand is not being guided anymore and he unconsciously started rolling his fingers around Arin's balls, the heel of his palm rubbing against the base of his dick. Arin's hand skids up Dan's forearm and grabs onto it, clammy but warm.

 

The low rumble of Arin's voice and the hot breath dampening Dan's neck in waves shoot straight to his cock, and when he shifts his hips it's because he -has- to move just to let Excalibur know he heard its plea, but Arin's thigh is right there and he ends up rutting the beginnings of his erection against it, cursing under his breath at the pang of pleasure rising up his body like spilled ink, and that, to Dan, is the wake up call: it's come to that moment where it's already way too late to chicken out of a sexy situation, where rationalization and all insecurities vanish and that distinctive, primal frame of mind starts take control.

 

Arin quietly watches Dan's temple and the corner of his left eye as he's still kind of enraptured by the way the younger man's body tenses up under his touch. Arin wants to look into his eyes again, wants to see some kind of reassurance there, maybe some trace of enjoyment because yeah, the hard, cylindrical heat pressing into his leg might be a valuable clue, but they both know in the end a boner might as well not mean shit. He doesn't do anything to call for his attention though, instead letting his left hand wander up and down Dan's arm, squeezing to feel stringy muscles working underneath his skin. He _could_  help the breathy moan he feels tumbling up his throat when Dan goes back to stroke the full length of his dick, but, he figures, what the hell: after all, if you wanna get signs of appreciation you might as well be the one to start giving them, right? 

 

Arin's moan is low and it drips lust all over Dan's neck, where his jugular vaguely shows, turning into a light bite, more like teeth bracketing the vein just so Arin has something to do with his mouth. Dan feels a tongue lapping at the spot and he's smirking when he finally lifts his gaze back up to his friend. Arin pulls back to look at him too, and Dan is licking his lips, hooded eyes and nerves swiftly receding, apparently. He looks confident, smug in a way that's completely new to Arin and he has to hide his bafflement by craning his head up to kiss him, taking initiative but letting Dan lead their movements this time. 

Turns out, Dan is distractingly good once he gets into gear, and Arin hums into it as they make out open mouthed and sloppy, his hand crawling all the way up Dan arm and shoulder, fisting into the fabric of his shirt on his chest, sliding up to the curls on his nape.

Actually, Dan turns out to be so good that Arin doesn't realize he's slipped his hand into the waistband of not only his sweatpants, but also his boxers, and Arin's fingers involuntarily clasp on Danny's hair when he feels one very broad palm comfortably wrapping around the middle of his bare dick. 

 

Dan thought Arin sounded good before, so he's not prepared for how sinful his voice gets once he starts working a loose fist up and down his shaft. Arin lets his head thump back against the pillow and his fingers slip out from his friend's hair, Dan bending down so he can kiss under his ear, nosing and nipping at the lobe while Arin pants, legs spreading further. Dan gives a shallow thrust of his hips against Arin's thigh and shivers, his fingers tightening around the head of Arin's cock causing a small moan to burst between Arin's sighs. Dans lips brush the grooves of Arin's right auricle. 

 

"You like that?" 

 

Arin swipes his tongue over his lower lip, eyes squeezed shut, hips rolling with the rhythm of Dan's hand: he's completely hard, pulsing in it. 

 

"Uh-huh"

 

"Lemme hear you"

 

Dan's voice floods the right side of Arin's perception: it's the heat against his cheekbone, damp lips on his skin and it scalds like molten chocolate but it also rasps like it has gravel in it. Arin tries to let go and be as loud as Dan wants him to be, as he _can_  be, but there's still some sort of barrier holding him back just that much.

 

"Dan, fuck- just.." 

 

His mouth and eyes hang open, and Dan, his lips empathetically parting too, just quietly keeps making a mess of Arin's boxers and his own hand, precome starting to spread all around Arin's underwear.

 

"Get these fucking pants off of me"

 

Dan huffs and leans up on his left elbow, his other hand slipping out from Arin's sweatpants, leaving a wet smear under his navel and hooking his thumb in the two elastic bands. Arin does too, and they both fumble to get clothes out of the way while Arin snaps his hips up using heels and shoulders for leverage. He groans and huffs and Dan giggles as Arin flails his left leg to get it free, his pants and boxers bunching down around his right knee. 

 

They're still bouncing a little, after the thump of Arin's ass back onto the mattress, but Dan's eyes shift to Arin's cock, resting in the groove of his pale hips. 

Dan knows, consciously, that what he sees should not surprise him in the least. He knows what an erection looks like, he would say he even knows male anatomy and genitalia pretty well.. And yet here his brain is: pausing, just like that. As his system reboots, Dan notices Arin's belly rising and falling with his breathing, the head of his dick glistening, wet and swollen, frenulum trailing down to the slight wrinkles of smooth, reddened skin under it, lined by thick veins, the tuft of hair at the root of his shaft, the darker shade of skin of his sac, the way Arin's left leg bends at the knee, spread flat on the sheets, left hand resting on left hipbone. Dan can see himself, for the briefest moment, nestled between Arin's legs, licking striped up his inner thighs as he makes his way up to suck his dick, teasing him. He immediately blushes hard, and it's all it takes to snap him back into the moment.

 

"Jesus Arin.." 

 

Dan takes him back into his hand and gives him a couple of quick strokes, fingers gliding all over the head on the final upstroke, then simply holding Arin's dick up loosely so he can just look at it twitch against his palm. Arin groans as Dan runs his thumb up the underside of it. 

 

"Dude, what?"

 

"I.. This is so fucking weird!"

 

For a second, Arin freaks out a bit, but Dan is laughing softly, and though Arin feels like the intensity of it all has been kicked down a notch, he laughs with Dan and wraps his right hand around the back of his neck, tugging him down for a kiss, just to remind him what they were supposed to be doing. When they part, he swallows and looks down at Dan's hand.

 

"I'm sorry, I guess?"

 

"No- I mean.. It's just-" 

 

Dan turns back to Arin with a small smirk on his face, and Arin can taste the mischief in it. He can't help mirroring him.

 

"Do that thing with your butt"

 

"I- pardon?"

 

"Ow come on. You know. The thing that makes your shaft-"

 

"Oooh _that_  thing!"

 

Arin almost expects Dan to violently burst out laughing when he complies, and then maybe they will be able to chalk this up as a honorary D Club meeting and that'll be that, but the giggle Dan lets out is immediately followed by his fingers trailing down to Arin's balls, giving them a squeeze before going back up to brush a thumb against Arin's frenulum, and this time, Arin moans low in his throat, loud, almost unaware, right against Dan's cheek, making him immediately turn his head and slip his tongue into Arin's mouth, hungry, humming. 

 

"That's what I'm talking about"

 

Dan strokes him base to tip tightening his grip when he's just under the head, a slight twist of his wrist and Arin wonders if that's what he does to himself as he moans again between messy kisses. He rocks his hips up, whispering Dan's name as he fists the sheets and combs through the curls on Dan's nape. 

 

He feels wetness all around his mouth and his dick, Dan's hand like a liquid clamp of heat around him, and Arin's smoothly slides in and out of it, countering Dan's movements, all muscles in his ass and thighs starting to tremble with each upward thrust. 

Before he realizes, Arin is so close to coming that he can't form intelligible words anymore, and he tugs on Dan's hair as a sort of warning, his jaw dropping open, eyes squeezing shut while he frantically fucks into Dan's fist, rhythm stuttering to a halt, abs and chest clenching as he comes with a sound that starts like a deep groan but turns into a broken moan, high pitched and almost pained. 

 

Dan watches Arin's face as he comes over his fingers and his own belly, watches how his body seizes up, the heat and the strength of it, the way Arin's hair falls around his face, blood pushing behind his cheeks and up his dick, the violence of the tendons straining against the skin of his neck, the deep red of his lips and his tongue. 

It's the first time Dan feels so deeply turned on by something that looks so.. powerful. His veins course lust and something that tastes like the familiar affection he's always felt for Arin, but the smell of Arin's pleasure latches onto it and leaves a scar inside Dan's nose, giving him the vague impression that he'll never be able to separate the two again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did I get this right?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do feel kinda bad for having Dan sit there with a raging hard on for a month.

Arin's head swims, literally: he feels like everything below his jawline has turned into muddy goo and his head is wobbling over it, like he's been decapitated, his skull thrown into the ocean, but the ocean was his body all along so it's fine, everything's okay. 

 

Dan is still there, somehow, looking at him with blood pounding inside his neck and a swollen look in his eyes, like his corneas are trying to hold in some kind of flood. Maybe the ocean is inside Dan too, he just hasn't let it go yet, like Arin did. Arin wants Dan's head to float beside his, wants to pull him up and up and upwards still, until there's not enough oxygen for the both of them and they would have to melt into each other, two lungs flowing into one single windpipe. 

 

Arin is not really sure of what his thoughts mean, translated into the reality where Dan is diving down to kiss and lap down to his collar bone, doesn't really know how to convey the desire he still feels pushing underneath his skin, but when Dan pants against him and wipes his sticky hand on the lower section of Arin's belly, Arin just wants to ride this wave as long as it will blur the fear lurking up his spinal cord, and he wants to punch a hole into Dan's voice so it spills all over both of them, so it becomes a part of both their liquid, joint bodies.

 

Dan's fist keeps slightly moving, curled around Arin's twitching dick, barely an inch down and then up again, its owner in a sort of dazed trance. Dan swallows hard, gaze fixed on Arin's half lidded eyes, and focuses on the information coming from his arm, all the way down to his palm: Arin getting softer in his hand, tension dissolving from his muscles and tendons, like ropes being slowly dragged into the water as the ship sails away, Arin' s voice gradually fading from his slowing breath. Dan knows he must be over sensitive by now, but he feels like something's gonna break if he lets go, and a vague sense of discomfort settles in the pit of his stomach, trying to tangle with the glowing embers of his arousal.

 

Arin gasps and screws his eyes shut. He feels like his body has opened up wide and wrapped around Dan like paper holding onto a gift, and words appear like strange symbols inside the skull he doesn't inhabit anymore, like pebbles he throws up in the air at the back of his own distant eyeballs, windows from which he can see the light coming from Dan's skin, like he's looking into someone's warmly lit living room. 

 

A slightly choked out whine tumbles from Arin's mouth, and Dan shakily lets go of him, hand sticky and vision blurry at the edges. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Arin watching him, and he wonders if he's sharp enough to tell that Dan is getting nervous again, because the inside of his pants feels tighter and hotter than ever and blood pounds in his temples and for some reason he's twenty three again and he has no idea what they're supposed to-

He can't finish the thought with Arin's palm pressing the back of Dan's head down, their lips clashing together, Arin's groan vibrating in both their throats, so Dan shuts his eyes tight and wipes his hand on Arin's bunched up shirt and then fists it, pushing it further up and around his best friends ribs.

 

Dan's body is half sprawled over Arin's, whose bare legs tangle with the one Dan has between them, their calves slowly rubbing together. Dan cups both of Arin's cheeks, fingertips brushing his ears, his hips bucking against Arin's hip without urgency: if he could just have a little more time, maybe.. 

 

Arin unhurriedly runs his hands over Dan's back, occasionally carding through his hair, making his way down a little bit at a time. He may still be fuzzy from coming and not familiar with bedroom-Dan in any way, but his body tells him that Dan feels a little stiffer, a little quieter, and that rushing him would probably not be the best idea. And besides, why would he want to rush when he's got Dan's tongue swirling in his mouth and the heat of his whole frame firmly pressed on top of him? 

 

Arin pulls away from Dan's lips and kisses them once more before dragging his eyes halfway open, huffing at the vague tang of panic he can read in his features. He brushes one loose curl back from his face.

 

"You okay?"

 

"Uh, yeah.."

 

Dan considers pushing his way through whatever this pinprick of unease inside of him is, closing his eyes and just letting Arin take care of it, but his friend's pulse, dull and strong, is right beneath the pads of his fingers, and as clear as he can feel it, he knows Arin can tell, and won't let that happen. 

 

"Yeah. Just a little shaky, I guess."

 

It feels weirdly liberating, being vague right against Arin's salty skin, knowing he doesn't have to articulate for his partner in crime to understand. He can be distant with his words and Arin will respect that, even when he's half naked and after Dan has seen what he looks like when he comes. He stifles the warm pressure blooming inside his chest, burying his face in the crook of Arin's neck, one hand sliding down to where his butt presses against the mattress, squeezing.

Arin chuckles, staring up at the ceiling and raising his voice above whisper level for the first time in what feels like hours.

 

"You know we don't have to do anything if.. if you're not ready or whatever"

 

Dan exhales, his breath dampening his own face and mixing with the thin layer of sweat on Arin's neck.

 

"How are you so ready for all of this?"

 

A couple of seconds pass, Dan's right leg still bracketed by Arin's, still moving against them.

 

"I dunno. I just went with what I felt, and I felt that I really wanted you and I felt that you wanted this.. too, so there. I mean, I don't know about you, but I still kinda feel it." 

 

Arin waits quietly for Dan to say something, but the only signs of life he gets from his best friend are a regular puff of breath under his chin and the steady, undeniable hot press of Dan's erection against his thigh. The elephant in the room. Arin doesn't really understand why, but he suddenly feels like laughing and just hugging Dan so tight he'd manage to strangle his dumb fear away, but that might just be the orgasm coursing his veins. Instead, he lets his right hand slip out from Dan's hair and slowly inch downward over his side, landing on Dan's butt. His left hand then sneaks between their bodies and Dan moves just enough to allow Arin's palm to cup his dick without too much pressure. It's not demanding nor expecting anything, it's just there. 

 

Dan opens his mouth against Arin's neck, his tongue brushing it for a moment, but Arin doesn't move, letting Dan's shiver dissipate against his mostly naked body. 

Dan exhales again and it almost feels like a moan, then he swallows way too hard around the lump of adrenaline in his throat.

 

"I do want this you know"

 

"No shit"

 

Dan's laughter is loud and unrestrained and it makes their bodies shuffle around, Arin's insides buzzing as the full shape of Dan's dick pushes into his open hand, shooting a faint twinge to his own balls. 

 

He does his best to keep quiet, and Dan speaks again after a couple more seconds.

 

"I think I may need just a little more time. Just.. yeah, just a little." 

 

"So you, uh.. yo- you don't want a hand with that?" 

 

Arin gives him the smallest squeeze of his hand and Dan squirms against it, mashing small huffs of laughter with "oh my god" and Arin's name and a weak shove to his friend's shoulder. 

 

He rolls off of Arin, thumping the back of his head against the pillow once, with his eyes closed and a scoff. He rests one hand over his chest, the other one grabbing his dick through pants and underwear to adjust the angry tension of it, to scold it.. and also to apologize to it.

 

Arin's head is tilted towards him, Dan knows.

 

"So how are you? You think you'll still be able to look me in the eyes after this?"

 

There's amusement in his voice, complicity, and it's a little jarring the way they're managing to contain this disturbing flood of new things between them. It's mostly Arin, but Dan needs to feel like he's helping too so he indulges himself. 

 

"Yeah. I guess so."

 

Well that was helping, wasn't it? But why does it have to be so goddamned hard for him? 

 

Needless to say, he laughs at his own internal joke and Arin quietly chuckles too, waiting for him to share. Dan just turns his head to him and smiles big and bright, a regular Dan kind of smile. He still doesn't say anything, but Arin can't help but giggle as he asks.

 

"What?"

 

"I- nothing, I just.. I mean- I didn't _lose_ the erection.." 

 

Arin wiggles his eyebrows and sits up on his elbows, tugging his legs in and fumbling to pull his boxers on, kicking the sweatpants off the bed and turning on his side so he can kiss Dan again, left hand sliding flat under Dan's, on his chest. He kisses sideways to his cheekbone, than whispers right against it.

 

"Dude, you can just.. take care of it here, if you want to" 

 

Dan sucks a long breath in, the hand resting over Arin's sliding down to his own stomach.

Arin pulls back. 

 

"You'd be okay with that?"

 

"Dude you're the one refusing sexual favours from someone else. And besides, I'm down for whatever you wanna give me, Dan"

 

It's supposed to be taken as sort of a joke, Dan's higher conscience knows, but his cock is still so full of blood and his pleasure centers are still in full throttle mode and there's all these scattered pictures of Arin and him tangled and knotted up pushing up Dan's throat and without even needing to form the thought Dan's hand is curled around the hard silhouette of his cock, his eyes shut and the heat of Arin's body has disappeared from his own skin, but the closeness of it in Dan's field of perception scorches him all the more. He swallows again, painting the shade of Arin's eyes as they wander all over him and his heaving chest, the exposed stripe of skin on his lower stomach, his swollen lips, the flush of his cheeks through the dark scrape of scruff. All of it is Arin's doing and this is too, Dan tells himself as he pushes his sweatpants down, and his wrists are shaking but the mere drag of fabric against his legs makes him shiver and he kicks and kicks to free them. 

 

Dan opens his eyes when he feels knuckles scraping across his knees and sees Arin sliding his pants all the way down and off him. His gaze is wide and quiet, mouth hanging slightly open, his hand resting just above Dan's left knee. Dan pulls himself back on the bed so he can sit up with his back against the headboard,   looking down at the rise and fall of Arin's chest as he slides his right hand below the band of his boxers. 

 

Arin watches him, blindly using the hem of his shirt to wipe come off of his stomach, and Dan has to close his eyes as the image crashes and melts into the feeling of grabbing his own hard cock. He gives it a slow upward stroke and shivers, lips pressing together, exhaling hard through his nose. He hears Arin swallow beside him, the sound closer than he expected, and he wonders if Arin really is right there or if it's something his tortured senses are telling him just because. Either way, Dan's glad he's got his eyes closed because the wet pop from inside Arin's throat is way too much to handle as it is. Dan speaks through a stiff jaw and the first shaky sparks of pleasure.

 

"W-what are you thinking about?" 

 

"Nothing"

 

The answer comes fast and tight and Dan is still conscious enough to feel a little confused, but not nearly enough to inquire. The head of his dick drags against his boxers and he hisses. Arin half gasps and his words sound like he isn't getting enough oxygen into himself.

 

"Like I know what you asking that means and it's like my brain is trying to make up fantasies and shit but I can build them only halfway up. I know I'm not really helping in the turning you on thing, but.. fuck Dan it's- like there's nothing in my head other than y-you touching yourself for me right now" 

 

Dan's groan is small and surprises them both, a new tide of blood rushing southward through Dan's body. He licks his lower lip and his head spins while his left hand moves on its own, thumb hooking in his underwear to push the front of it down, over his erection and under his balls. 

Arin swears under his breath and Dan's mouth hangs open, his hand now free to move along the shaft of his dick smooth and confident, slick with nervous sweat and the first hints of precome.

 

"Jesus Dan look at you"

 

Dan chuckles, surprisingly enough, and opens his eyes a crack, turning towards Arin, sliding his left hand into his hair, at the nape of his neck, curling his fingers into a loose fist. Arin's gaze keeps shifting between Dan's lidded eyes, his lips and the hand working slowly on his cock, but there's too much of him to take in and his peripheral vision strains to catch the way Dan's left knee bends and bumps into Arin's thigh, how his breathing is quickening and Arin's lungs involuntarily mirror it. His whole body screams at his conscience to eat Dan alive, and he shivers against the violence of the desire he has to contain.. for now.

 

Arin is almost dizzy with how everything inside of him feels hot, fast and viciously alive, but somehow he can barely manage to speak above whisper-level.

 

"Can I kiss you?"

 

Dan tugs his head close enough that their lips barely touch and takes Arin's lower lip between his teeth, before openly sliding his tongue between Arin's parted lips, licking into his mouth with a hum. Arin lets himself sag forward a bit, leaning into Dan, spreading his palm on his chest, his fingers twitching when Dan pants directly against him. 

 

"Tell me what _you_ are thinking about, baby" 

 

It slips past his brain to mouth filter, and Arin is vaguely embarrassed at how obviously aroused his voice sounds. Dan huffs against his cheek and gives it the lightest bite before backing off to look at him, and there's something pooling behind his eyes: it's masked by the heat of Dan's lust, but it still makes Arin's  chest feel tight in a nice, terrifying way.

 

Dan sees himself, in his mind's eye, like that bit of flesh that gets caught in the teeth of your fly sometimes when you try to zip up with a half-mast situation going on. Only, right now, he would be a completely hard dick, being ungracefully chewed on by the sexy equivalents of fight or flight. To his advantage though, he isn't unarmed because god fucking damnit he has not named his mighty sword Excalibur just because. And no, he does not feel slightly ridiculous giving his dick a couple of really purposeful strokes, like he knows he's  gonna make himself shiver and spasm, because if he could only get to the point of forgetting he's really scared of this whole thing he could pull things out of himself that would make Arin shoot right through this godforsaken ceiling.

 

Just as Dan's thumb rubs a circle around the head of his cock, he feels a hand clenching around the middle of his thigh and he knows he's there: he can't tell which of his heartbeats are fear and which are burning fucking desire, and it makes his thoughts blur, sound like really crunchy, distorted guitar chords. He pushes a groan out of his throat, a volcano spitting its cork.

 

"You know.. I've had this dream a while ago."

 

Arin pants really quietly and Dan huffs a little, trying not to let his mind rush through the whole thing.

 

"I could see.. spread legs from my perspective, like they were mine, but they weren't mine."

 

Dan strokes himself as slowly as he possibly can, stopping to squeeze the base of his dick, to keep control, to shoot a quick look at Arin, regretting it immediately when his eyes stumble upon his best friend's. It's like the deepest, coldest mountain lake: Dan sinks in and it never ends and he's sure his breath is never gonna come back. Arin's voice is like a hammer hitting just under his kneecap, and words jerk out of Dan.

 

"Go on"

 

"I had my arms wrapped around a girl's waist, I could feel the weight of her boobs on my forearms.. I could see you between her legs"

 

Dan swallows, eyes drifting closed again, Arin's hand inching upwards, pressing down on his thigh to feel the solid warmth of muscle beneath his skin. Dan feels Arin's fingertips so close to his balls but so definitely not there that it verges on painful.

 

"I thought she must be sitting in my lap, but I- I could feel your breath on me. Like her legs were mine. And she was.. I was so fucking wet for you Arin"

 

Arin swears again and he leans into Dan's neck to mouth at it, his middle finger lifting and barely reaching forward, brushing Dan's sac as his hand settles a little further towards Dan's  inner thigh, making him squirm against Arin's broad palm. Dan lets himself moan, lower lip caught between his teeth, rock hard slickness in his fist.

 

"It was like her lower body was mine, but she had her head on my shoulder. Like I was watching from behind _her_ shoulder.. but then I felt you licking into me. I wanted to touch you, wanted to feel your hair between my fingers and guide your mouth on her but I had no arms to do it. All I could do- I could fucking hear your tongue spreading her open. I fuckin' _felt it_ too, felt your nose pushed against me and you looked up straight at me, and I moaned.. I- it was Suzy's voice but it was me" 

 

Dan's hips smoothly buck up to match the pump of his fist now, and he pants and gasps between words, trying to sound coherent even with pleasure sizzling through him bright and pointy, getting exponentially more insistent with every wet slap of his curled fingers against the tuft of hair at the root of his cock. 

He's aware of Arin's lips messily mashed against the side of his neck, of him muffling curses against his jaw and cheek. 

 

Arin says Dan's name like he's trying to fit something way too big into just three letters, like it's bursting at the seams and Dan turns his head to find his lips right there, to suck that deep voice of his right into his own throat.

Dan's left hand is still tangled in Arin's hair and he presses his best friend's face against his, hungry and shaky, moaning into him and shivering when he feels Arin reciprocating.

 

A way more violent chill rakes through Dan's limbs when Arin's left hand finally fills the gap and lifts from the top of Dan's thigh, wrapping around the hand Dan is using to jerk off, steady but slow, so he can still read the signs that Dan is cool with it. Dan's fist loosens, and Arin tries to slot his fingers in the spaces left by Dan's as best as he can, catching glimpses of hot, hard flesh. He presses his teeth under Dan's jaw, his hand sliding upwards over the back of Dan's to brush the damp head of his dick. Dan moans his name and it's like a punch of warmth going down from Arin's stomach way down to his balls. His own dick twitches in his boxers and it all happens very fast: Dan moves his hand and Arin thinks for a second that he's gonna keep jerking himself off, but instead he slides it out from under Arin's wrist and wraps it over Arin's fingers, guiding them to curl around his cock, tightening until the whole of Arin's palm is pressed against the veins running up the shaft.

 

Dan pulses in Arin's grip as he starts sliding his fist, slow, deliberate, leaning up to whisper into Dan's ear.

 

"Show me how you like it" 

 

"Fuck Arin.. I- 'm almost there"

 

Arin's lets his hand follow Dan's rhythm, adding the occasional sweep of his thumb over the slit, the ridge of Dan's head, tightening every so often to make Dan choke on air. When their hands start to speed up and Dan's moans become louder, almost regular and shameless, Arin leans close again, hoisting one of his legs between Dan's. His own voice sounds slightly unfamiliar to him, low in a sticky, sordid sort of way.

 

"I know I've never done it before and I probably wouldn't-"

 

He stops to swallow and to mask a pinch of insecurity by licking a broad, languid stripe up to the shell of Dan's left ear.

 

"I know I probably _won't_ be very good at it.. but Dan, I want to suck _the life_  out of you" 

 

Dan tugs on Arin's hair and his jaw drops, moaning an open, dragged out, low "Ah" that sounds like everything inside of him is growling, trying to crawl out from the depth of his body and towards Arin. 

 

Dan comes with a thump of his head back against the headboard, mouth open and his eyes screwed shut, his fingers tight around Arin's, both their hands coated with the come that doesn't shoot upwards and lands on Dan's shirt. 

Arin watches Dan's body starting to recover, floating down from his orgasm like a leaf, his chest heaving gradually slower, the dip above his collarbones shining with sweat and the faint red marks scattered around his neck. 

 

Arin's sticky hand shifts to Dan's hip and he half-hovers above him as they kiss slow and deep, both feeling the other smile into it each time they break apart. 

 

When he pulls away long enough to take in his surroundings, Dan feels like the words they both said are still hanging heavy in the air, among the smell of sex and the fresh memories of each other's moans, and while he's not as scared anymore, he still has no idea of how this whole thing is going to unfold. Seeing the same cloud of bliss and doubt passing behind Arin's eyes while his hands are still roaming under Dan's shirt, though, is enough to stifle his unease, weirdly enough.

 

Ten minutes later, Arin plants one last kiss on Dan's lips, then sits up amongst the slightly crumpled sheets and turns around to look at Dan, grinning and shaking his head. Dan chuckles as Arin scoots towards the edge of the bed.

 

"You sure you wanna go back to your room? In.. that state?" 

 

Arin pulls the stained hem of his shirt forward and grimaces at it, then making a face at Dan as he stands up.

 

"And just whose fault would that be? Nah, I mean.. we both need some sleep, I think. And besides.. I gotta wake up really early tomorrow so, like.. I'll definitely call you though"

 

Dan chucks a pillow at his chest and Arin wobbles backwards as he adjusts his pants and tries to smooth his shirt into a decent shape. They both laugh a little and Arin stalls, swaying in place, having no clue how to leave the room with images of his best friend's O-face flashing behind his eyes no matter where he directs them. His voice is rough and he tries to clears his throat from his stupid, default awkwardness.

 

"Alright well I'll just go then"

 

"Arin, come here"

 

Dan has sat up and is now kneeling on the mattress, meeting Arin half way as they both lean forward without too much grace or coordination. They kiss one last time with their eyes closed, and Arin inhales deeply, his head clearing enough to say "goodnight Danny" looking into Dan's smiling eyes without fucking stuttering. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I made you wait for it but hope it was worth it! Now on to another month of silence! (Jk, hopefully)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I've been stuck. And boy, stuck I still am! I guess we'll all have to be patient.. also because I apparently want to take this in the drama direction sssssssssooooo.. yea, lots of good times ahead!
> 
> Alright listen. I know now they DID have a huge tour bus but I did take some liberty with the hotel rooms (That they obviously didn't have on tour) and the fact that both dan and arin have rooms all for themselves. Indulge me. Aight enjoy!   
> (lyric is from Catapult by the arctic monkeys)

Dan's limbs act as with a mind of their own, yanking his t-shirt over a nest of very tired curls and tossing it on the bathroom floor, next to the sink, just like they do when he's at home. The white-ish strings running from his brain stem to his spine don't know that there isn't a washing machine in this tiny hotel room of his, and that his dirty clothes would probably be better off soaking in warm water and hand soap, but the economy of his whole conscience has decided that motor autopilot is a way better solution, so that the higher layers of grey matter can do.. whatever it is that they do when there's something that needs to be mentally chewed on carefully before being swallowed and deconstructed and used to build other stuff.

  
So Dan doesn't really know he's stepping into the shower as he does, and he jolts a little when the water hits him cold on the top of his back, still far from the temperature he set the knobs to. His presence of mind only lasts enough to look down at his naked self, his hands, the goosebumps lining his arms and thighs. Why did Arin have to take cold goddamn showers? Why did this particular thing have to be such an inevitable reminder of him?

  
Water splashes warmer and Dan maps his own body with his soap-covered hands, like he's wandering around his house once the summer skies are done throwing a tantrum against his windows, checking that every piece of furniture is still in place. He knows, consciousy, that there's no reason for any of them not to be, but checking seems like the appropriate thing to do, to dissipate the blunt sense of alarm that remains, the residue of alert and adrenaline.  
So Dan washes Arin's touch off his skin, reluctant, dazed. He remembers a lyric that's always struck him: "The day after a triumph is as hollow as the day after a tragedy".  
Huh.

Dan lies on his bed with an uncomfortably sharp knowledge of the knot at the centre of his conscience. 

No.   
It's like he's the earth,  the smoldering core of it, and he can distantly, but distinctively, feel the turmoil of his crust: splitting open and clashing, rising and dipping, slowly crawling into new positions. The seemingly immovable faults making planet Dan Avidan up are placidly floating over gurgling lava, giving the earth a face that still looks raw and wounded, like all new things, and they hiss and crack when the downpour comes.  
It's a million-years process, but what does time mean to a bunch of elements suspended in the void of space?   
  
Air goes in and out of Dan's body, the surface of his thoughts still lost inside Andromeda while the depths are shaken by a vague blur of speed and elation. It's all indefinite, abstract. He feels out of context. Like the pure idea of himself, a prototype, not the material being that's supposed to be marked by experience, tainted by the very fact that it exists. Something straight out of Kant's pen. Pathetic.  
  
He's afraid of falling asleep because the moment you close your eyes is the same moment tomorrow sits on your chest and forces you to open them again, but Dan knows he won't even last a minute. He's not even completely dry when sleep starts slowly wrapping around the edges of his vision.  
The last conscious thing he has time to form into his brain is how, once he and Arin were done, for a moment Dan had wondered if the two of them would fall asleep together, on those same hotel sheets hes falling asleep onto right now.  
  
  
Arin opens his eyes for the third time that night. He can tell -this time he can- that it's finally morning enough to stay awake. He can tell by the blue-grey glow hovering in the air, filling his room like smoke blown into a plastic bottle.   
His thoughts have to trudge through his brain like they're physically making their way through the pink mush of his grey matter, avoiding blood vessels and his memory circuit: it's an heroic feat, and it grants Arin something like a good minute of oblivion before that bastard of his hippocampus manages to catch up and softly neigh its content into the rest of Arin's conscience.   
There's a reason he hates sea horses, goddamnit.   
He stares at the ceiling listening to his own breathing, struggling in and out of his nose: he forgot his Nasaline thingie last night, no wonder he couldn't sleep right.   
He peels his sheets back, swings his legs off the edge of the bed, quietly looks down at the boxers he's had bunched around his thighs and knee just a few hours earlier: he didn't shower last night, of course he couldn't.. ah, fuck it.   
Yeah, no wonder he couldn't sleep right, he's floating in the goddamn twilight zone. No shit you can't sleep there.   
  
Every movement Arin makes from his bed to the shower is driven by a stubborn resentment, by the solid knowledge of being a moron: it's not even articulate because it's not like he's examining his actions, he's not even re-living the situation or anything. It's the blurry, vaguely self-deprecating, grumpy mumble inside his head that manages to protect his actual feelings when he's still not ready to face them full on. It's a child hiding from his parents. His very own pair of blinders.   
Blinders. Horses. Parents. God, his mom would be proud right now, wouldn't she?   
  
The final realisation comes in the form of hot water pooling around Arin's feet, splashing on aseptic white tiles: he's cheated on Suzy.   
The thought coils behind Arin's eyes, foams inside his nose, drags against the roof of his mouth, loops around his uvula and he tries to swallow the pressure down, gagging on it.   
Arin's body knows that the water temperature is actually more lukewarm than hot, but it's not what he usually prepares for when he steps in a shower and he grimaces at the small relief he feels in the discomfort: the cliché of punishing your own body to atone.   
Lying back down on his big, empty bed, Arin weakly wishes narcolepsy on command was thing, so he could escape the burden of being conscious and in possess of the memory of Dan's broken, moaned out version of Arin's name.   
  
Dan manages not being late when he joins everyone by the tour bus, despite lingering in his room way longer than he would have needed to. Arin is already there, one bag slung across his right shoulder and a couple   sitting heavily under his eyes: Dan feels like he just drove over the hugest puddle in the universe and he's losing control of his vehicle, for one heart-stopping moment.   
He didn't expect Arin to meet his gaze right away, but then again he wouldn't really be able to tell what he was expecting, given that his mind seems to have become incapable of carrying any thought out to completion. It only gets worse once he's walked up to the group: his voice feels off, he's certain he's moving like an unfinished android and English has never sounded so foreign leaving his throat. He's close to Arin's electromagnetic field and their respective waves are bending the shit out of each other.  
  
Dan shifts in his seat with his hands dampening the smooth shell of his phone. Silence drills into his skull, but music only fuels the ball of anxiety firmly planted underneath his sternum, so he basks in his own quiet unease and the idea of breaking the impasse via the miracle of technology. He screws his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose, a dramatic gesture for no one to see, and the absurdity of it helps Dan plunge himself in the apathetic glow of the "Fuck it" attitude: he taps his way to Arin's name and his fingers hover, full of purpose and at a complete loss for words.   
  
Arin's phone buzzes, and it's not like he hasn't been expecting it -or something like it- to happen, but it still sends a thrill running up his spine. Maybe it's not even Dan, maybe it's.. whatever. Maybe it's his phone company telling him there's a special offer exclusively for moronic shitheads ending in a couple days and he'd better hurry and get it. It could be someone sending him a meme. Could be Dan saying he's quitting his job or something. Maybe it's Suzy asking him how's it going.   
Could be anything.   
  
And Arin really believes it could be anything,  but it's Dan and he knew it already, fear and excitement tingling along his arms as he just holds his phone in his lap, waiting for the courage to pool high enough in his hands to open one goddamned text from his best friend.   
  
It's a turkey emoji.   
Tension thaws away from Arin's limbs, settling from a chainsaw-like noise to the low thrum that now buzzes in the pit of his stomach.  
The pad of his thumb hovers over the screen, but Dan's not done.  
  
D: I spent an hour thinking of something funny or at least clever or whatever   
  
The urge to put his phone down pushes inside Arin's wrists. He wonders if he's been such a whimp his entire life and just never realised.   
Dan seems to be writing stuff and canceling it out in cycles: Arin stares at the words "is typing" with lethal intensity each time they appear, nerves gradually raising their buzzing again.   
  
A: oh, dude, it shows. No one could've said it better  
  
A: I sure as shit couldn't   
  
Arin is now painfully aware of Dan's body existing in his vicinity, and the words he just typed in his best friends head. Everything is so vivid he feels on drugs, just not the good kind.  
  
D: why thanks my friend, I can always count on you to appreciate some solid art.  
  
Dan takes a moment to live out the impossible scenario of the two of them dropping the conversation and going on like nothing ever happened, the scenario in which neither of their bodies remember the previous night and it just gets erased from the universe's timeline. Squashed by entropy.   
  
D: and besides, I guess it suits my situation since I'm sitting here like a chicken instead of talking to you  
  
A: yeah but you're the one who started the conversation so who's the big ass chicken here then?   
  


D: that's why I sent a turkey and not a chicken, ya doof 

Arin smiles, in spite of himself, and turns his head towards Dan's seat, straining to catch him with the corner of his eyes without having to move his torso. He doesn't want to upset the environment too much with movement right now.   
Of course Dan is looking at him, I mean, he's the one with a clear view of the back of Arin's skull from where he is. All of a sudden, a gust of anxiety passes through Arin. He feels disadvantaged.

A: stop staring holes into my mane dude

D: msorry, maybe you were born with it

D: I mean, I AM sitting behind you so 

A: so maybe you could not be all the way back there rn

Dan pauses, his brow slightly furrowed. He let's a good minute pass, then grabs his stuff and stands up, making his wobbly way to the empty seats opposite to Arin's. He tosses a glance at his friend while he tries to settle down as gracefully as possible, then bows his head down over his phone again.

D: you mind if I stay here? I don't think I'm ready for contact yet 

A: yeah, me neither

A: I was actually a little scared you were gonna sit beside me

D: I was about to do that for a second but I turkeyed out 

This time, Dan can hear Arin's small chuckle. They look at each other for a moment over the sounds around them: Arin has always been fascinated with this feeling, with how normal everything around you still feels when you're standing with your toes on the edge.   
Neither of them wants to look away.


	8. Chapter 8

They're going home. 

Darkness rolls undisturbed outside Arin's window pane, and just a couple of hours are now between him and the smell of his house, of Suzy's hair.  
His stomach churns with hunger and stress and he makes a point of rubbing his palms down the side of his thighs, denim screeching against his clammy skin inside his ears. It's not a real sound, Arin knows that, but he feels the situation could really use some dramatic, comic-style special effects.  
If there's one thing that's been setting him on edge is how mundane this whole ordeal has been up until now. 

Nothing has happened between Dan and him on the last days of the tour: hugs have been shared, laughs too; claps on shoulders, the raunchiest jokes, junk food meals and the occasional late night, congratulations-I'm-so-proud-of-us texts. All the jazz.  
Dan still has his very own way of whipping around out of nowhere, his hair spinning out of the way of his eyes in the motion like a toothpaste commercial, and looking at Arin with that bright-ass smile of his. In the meantime, Arin has developed his very own way of lamely stumbling to catch his breath every time Dan does that, because he's never had to deal with having a crush on Dan before so he's not really familiar with this whole being punched in the stomach every time his best friend smiles at him thing.  
Getting the cold slap of jealousy whenever Dan directs this particular smile to other people is also an interesting novelty, considering the gloomy, not-at-all smiley nature of Dan Avidan. It's just terrific. 

So now Arin broods.  
He keeps replaying the only conversation he and Dan had about.. the thing: how scared he was to face Dan and feel different about him, how words kept slipping out from his grip because he couldn't even figure out what he was actually feeling. Dan had seemed so melancholy even before any mention of Suzy, as if he already knew what Arin was only starting to metabolise. The implications, the.. yeah, the consequences.

Arin also remembers how excited he was to be talking about it though, how he'd been waiting for it, fantasising about it.  
In hindsight, it kinda scares him now, the intensity of his anticipation, how overwhelmed his body felt once he finally had Dan before his eyes and was free to say whatever he wanted to him.  
He didn't, of course. He couldn't have. You can't just tell your best friend that you get incredibly confused and unsettled and horny whenever you think about him naked.  
Or maybe you really can and Arin is just the biggest coward on earth.

Dan sits on the opposite side of the corridor, parallel to Arin, his usual spot as of late.  
He's looking out his window into the night, but he accidentally locks eyes with his best friend for a second through his own reflection on the window pane: he's learned to not immediately shy away from moments like these in the last few days, that trying not to look at Arin or touch him or changing his behavior in any way to avoid unease is the best way to actually create it, so Dan keeps his gaze where it is and goes with whatever glimpse of emotion his face is showing Arin, undisturbed in the whir of the bus. He can't see the color of Arin's eyes, just deep dark circles hugged by bright white.

Dan turns the volume of his music up to try and drown the droning inside his head: he can get a little stuck on certain specific words or sentences when something is bothering him; heritage, he assumes, of his bumpy history as an OCD sufferer.  
He's nowhere near where he was all those years ago, but it's a behavior his brain has never completely let go of, so every once in a while he'll have to resume his old ways to help his mind unspool: he gathers all the words and bits of phrases nagging him and uses them as lyrics to a song he's listening to, deconstructing them into harmless syllables he can arrange to fit the melody perfectly. 

Of course it feels a little odd, tearing down Suzy's name until it's just a humble bunch of symbols floating through Dan's head, so he skips that one.

Brick by little brick, Dan stacks up bits of marriage, fuck-up, catastrophe, misery, end, fired, disgusting, gay, family, heart, decision, silence, friend until he's wordlessly singing them along to the National song flowing between his ears.  
It stops helping as soon as they have to get down from the bus and into their loved ones' arms, awaiting them in the parking lot of the office, anyway.

(...)

Arin stares at Suzy's hands as she unlocks the door to their house, standing behind her on the porch with his bag tugging his right shoulder towards the ground. He reminds himself that gravity does not get stronger in time, no matter what happens in anyone's small, insignificant life. Sure feels that way though. 

She kisses him properly once they're inside and the only weight Arin is carrying is not of the material kind. She tells him she can't wait to hear all about it.. in the morning that is, after they've both showered and slept and breakfast and a whole new day sit patiently in front of them. 

"Any juicy highlights?" 

She asks from halfway across the living room, and Arin has to summon his most reasonable self to not succumb to the certainty that she must already know, somehow. Except it doesn't even matter because, if Arin's ever been a man, this is the moment he accepts that she's about to know and whatever happens next he has to face.

"Eh, not really, nothing that can't wait anyway," 

"Alright, I'm gonna go brush my teeth. You need a hand unpacking?" 

"Nah, I got it. You haven't done that yet?"

Suzy tosses him a sleepy smile and rocks in place, tugging the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands.

"I wanted to wait up for you but I fell asleep on the couch," 

Arin's insides seize up and his arms tingle as he bends down to unzip his bag, his hair hiding most of his face. He looks normal enough when he straightens up and looks back at his wife. 

"I'm good, go back to bed. Thanks for picking me up baby,"

"Don't be too long okay?" 

"Be right up"

She half-smiles and blows him a kiss before heading into the bathroom, a soft click as the door shuts behind her. 

Twenty minutes later Arin lies under his sheets, strung out, Suzy breathing steadily beside him and the screen of his phone staring back at him, waiting, impatient.  
The safety of his home feels forgiving in an almost hostile kind of way, slightly passive aggressive, and Arin knows full well he's projecting so he taps his way to Dan's name and texts him to dilute the hint of bile behind his uvula. 

A: I didn't tell Suzy

He doesn't have to wait long for a response.

D: you said you wanted to

A: I know. I couldn't. 

D: you think we need to talk more about this? 

A: you mean telling Suzy or..?

D: well, like, all of it I guess

A: I dunno. You think it's gonna be weird?

D: probably. I mean

A: what?

D: I mean I'm pretty sure it's gonna be weird at some point but we can probably handle it, right? 

A: probably

Dan stares at the conversation, picturing Arin and the light washing over his face in the dark. He aches a little bit, but it's bearable. For now. 

A: I mean you're mostly right usually so yeah, probably 

D: oh stop it you. So we wait and see? 

A: right. 

D: ...it's already weird isn't it

A: yup. Can't wait to see you at the office. 

D: imagine our first grump session

A: jesus

D: this is fun, we had a great idea

A: I'd like to point out that you're the main reason behind this my dude

D: well I can't really disagree with you now, can I, boss? 

Arin finds himself smirking, inspite of the situation. But that's Dan Avidan for you.

A: no, guess you can't. 

He waits a good ten seconds, wondering what Dan is wearing, if he's in complete darkness or watching TV or something, what's gonna happen. 

A: good night Dan 

Dan's thumb hovers over the most neutral kiss emoji possible, and he gets somewhere between weirded out and annoyed at the sly thumping of his own heart. Then he closes his eyes and sends it, immediately followed by the extremely detailed little turkey, the inside joke spreading like a blanket across the pressure inside his chest.

Sleep comes fairly easily to both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't cheat on your partners kids. Also I'm sorry Arin, I'm being a real dick to you but hey, that's fun of fiction!
> 
> P.s. hold onto your hat. I rushed this one cause the next's gonna be filthy and it kept distracting me.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I try being brief every single time. I can't. I'm sorry. 
> 
> Anyway enjoy the filth my friends!

It's late. It's so fucking late Dan isn't even tired-tired anymore. He's indifferent to the sluggyness of his brain. He's invulnerable and sloppy and everything is finny. Fine+funny, that is. He's also a goddamn genius apparently.

He may be, however, a little vulnerable to the flashing lights from the game playing on the screen. And also to the smell of Arin's hair, scattering around as he whips them out of his face. Dan laughs and reaches a dizzy hand in his friend's face's direction, tangling his fingers in Arin's hair and pushing them back over his forehead and the top of his head.

"Thanks dude"

"Bleh, you're oily" 

"I know! But I washed em this morning! It's been a long fucking day and my hair is being a bitch about it" 

"Makes you look kinda artsy" 

"Merci Danièl" 

Dan tosses a look at the screen of his phone to check the time as Arin throws deadpan insults in pseudo-french at the game and the controller and the whole of humanity itself: they're almost done, half an hour from now he'll be driving home. He stretches his spine, palms pressing on his lower back, groaning and cracking like an old rusty door.

Dan's shirt rides up on his stomach just a couple of inches in the process, and it's just a split second, but he catches Arin's eyes flickering towards the stripe of naked skin between Dan's belt and the hem of his t-shirt. It's only one moment, but all of a sudden Dan feels like he's been dipped in hot sauce.

He doesn't know if Arin has caught him catching him, but the air wouldn't feel so tight if he didn't. So what if he did? What do they do now?! 

Nothing, that's what. It's fine. It was nothing, and that's what Dan's going to do. Nothing. 

But pressure starts to leak into Dan's nothing soon enough, and he's suddenly SO aware of.. everything.  
He's never been on heavy drugs, but he imagines this is what it must feel like to be an ex-addict, when you genuinely believe you're out of the tunnel and then it punches you right in the face just like that, out of the blue. And the memory of the high is so vivid it scares you and it makes your bones rattle in place. 

Arin has to physically restrain himself from clearing his throat.  
Alright, so he managed to make things weird in a mere nanosecond, but he's not going to make it worse, that much he can promise himself.  
He presses his lips together over Dan's commentary of the game, grateful that at least one of their brains doesn't shut down at the weakest hint of tension. 

Except this time it's not as weak.  
Arin would say they've handled the situation like champions, so far, becoming masters of defusing little moments like this with bright lights, brief stern looks and lots of laughing. And Arin knows that a big part of avoiding most of the awkward, painful itch is simply not letting himself dwell on.. anything really.  
Well, guess it's a little too late for that now, isn't it? 

It's written all over Arin's face, Dan can feel it slither around between the two of them. Goddamnit.  
He's always been the kind of person who's easily dragged into whatever mood his fellow human being is swimming in, and with Arin it's not even conscious anymore, it just seeps into him. But that's when he usually manages to recognize the feeling, assess if it's good for the show or not, and steer it into something harmless. 

Lately, "harmless" has become something slightly different for them, though, and steering into it is not always that easy, at least not for Dan. Now he's got proof that it must get hard for Arin too, as much of an interesting choice of words that might be.  
It's kind of amazing, to Dan, how some parts of him are still screaming that he's a goddamned idiot while the thin veil of "Fuck it" settles comfortably all over his skin.

As they wrap the last episode up, Arin swallows. His spit is almost as thick as the quick look Dan shoots at his throat while he takes a long swig of water.  
But why tonight? What did they do wrong?

So yes, the room is probably too dark and the office is way too empty for comfort, but they're sitting so fucking far apart and they practically haven't been touching.. Arin can't even remember when was the last time Dan touched him. 

He remembers one time in particular just fine, thou- NO, goddamnit. Jesus.

The train of Arin's thoughts is steadfastly derailing towards the prospect of a very tense session of self love in the near future, but he doesn't really feel in danger until he sees Dan move, in the outskirts of his field of vision as he switches everything off: he gets up from the couch as Arin is turning around, throws his arms in the air and leans backwards. Another deep groan, a little more cracking, a lot more stomach for Arin to see.  
His happy trail makes Arin's palms sweat.

At least this time there's absolutely no doubt that they're both onto the same wildly rocking boat.  
The problem now is that Dan has run out of.. plan. That's the crappy part of the fuck it attitude: it perfectly disposes of an immediate situation, and then promptly leaves you to deal with the pile of shit and consequences it produces.

Arin's eyes are still on Dan, at chest level as they both take a moment to silently evaluate their respective wave lengths and make sure they match.  
Or that's what they'd be doing if they weren't too tired and frustrated to even conjure the concept of wave length.

Arin lets a small sigh out, swiping his tongue over the side of his lower lip before looking at Dan, like he's just dropped an argument he'd been half-heartedly trying to win. 

"C'mon, I'll walk you to your car," 

Dan chuckles, resolve quickly crumbling at the edges.

"Yeah man, I know, that's what you've been doing for the last five years,"

The good thing to do now would be for one of them to point at the huge fucking elephant in the room, voicing the tension out.  
Neither of them speaks as they get through the front door, trying to cram both their bodies out at the same time. They laugh at each other, Dan giving a shove at Arin's shoulder, Arin accompanying the motion and rocking back to bump into Dan's, but their grins fade quickly as they get closer to Dan's car, parked right next to the concrete wall of the building adjacent to their office. 

Arin's chest pounds dull and deep, his body shaken by each step, Dan's figure buzzing at his side: he's saying something, something casual that Arin hears but doesn't really process, so he just hums in response. Dan huffs, and Arin doesn't know if he's making a fool of himself, but the thrum in his limbs prevents him from getting caught up in the thought. 

When they get to Dan's car, Arin stands by the front bumper, watching Dan fumble for his keys: he's looking at the ground, brows drawn together, but his gaze darts up to Arin a couple of times as he disentagles his key chain from the fabric inside his pocket. When he finally gets them out, he straightens up, and a second passes in silence before the slimmest shard of light shines behind Dan's eyes. 

"Dude, I almost forgot, I got something for you. Come here."

He gestures for Arin to follow him by the side of his car that's gonna trap them both between the vehicle and the wall. Arin leans his weight against Dan's shotgun door as his friend opens the back passenger door and the top half of his body disappears into darkness.  
Arin can't help the quiet laugh escaping him as Dan's voice comes muffled by the rustling of stuff getting thrown around and all the huffing and puffing.  
After a minute, Dan comes back out empty handed.

"I'm sorry man, I swear it was there this morning!"

"Sure it was Dan. Are you gonna wack me across the head and rob me like you intended now?"

"Aw shut up. I'd brought you the first volume of death note my friend lent me, remember? So your lazy ass doesn't have an excuse not to read it," 

"Well, thanks for.. the thought, I guess,"

Dan snorts a laugh and starts to reach his arms forward to hug him as he catches the glimpse of panic in Arin's eyes, but it only lasts a quarter of a second before they've got their arms around each other.  
Dan lets a gust of breath out, Arin's hand patting his back, friendly enough, but the air coming out of his lungs gets caught up in Arin's hair and everything is so warm and just.. good.

The throbbing in Dan's stomach gets painfully stubborn as Arin sucks a quick breath in, his arms shifting around Dan's back, hands coming to rest on the sides of his ribs, a sign that now would be a perfectly acceptable time to let go of each other.  
Dan doesn't let go though, forearms crossing behind Arin's neck, his face turning towards it so his nose and lips brush the skin underneath Arin's right ear.

The next breath Arin lets out is shaky, their bodies are so close and it's so easy for him to push Dan's back against the side of his car, eyes barely open and his fingers clutching at Dan's shirt and the heat radiating from beneath it.  
He feels lips barely pressing against his jaw and now Arin is panting, suddenly and insanely worked up, hit by days and days of swallowing raging boners down. Just not in the way he sometimes wishes he could. 

He keeps his touch light and their movements are still tentative, the rustle of fabric shifting between them mingling with the sound of Dan's light kisses, the smell of his clothes hitting Arin in waves. 

Damp puffs of air burn against Arin's right cheek, and the anticipation amplifies everything, so the drag of Dan's stubble sends a jolt and a shiver down Arin's arms, and his knees shake, his heartbeat echoing in his ears and throat. 

Dan bumps his nose into Arin's before touching the side of their foreheads together, breathing slow and deep to keep himself in check for the time being.

"Arin, I don't know what I'm doing,"

"Don't you?"

"I mean I do know but if you want me to stop now would be the time to tell me, cause I don't think I'll be able to if we go on"

A choked up little sound comes out of Arin's throat as he tries to speak, so he lets his hands make a point for him, pressing Dan's lower back closer to him with one, the one in his hair sliding down to Dan's chest, fingers trailing down his neck and collar bone in their path, closing his fist around a chunk of the collar of Dan's t-shirt.

Dan huffs air out of his nose before he closes the small space between their mouths, his upper body surging forward, arching against the solid pressure pinning his back to the car's window pane. He spreads his knees a little wider against the leg trying to settle between his own, humming as Arin's tongue slides into his mouth, his fingers moving somewhat desperately against his chest.  
Arin breaks the kiss with something that's a little less than a gasp, his eyes closed and his head shaking just a bit.

"Wait, do you want to stop?" 

Dan lifts his gaze for just a beat and they both look slightly alarmed in the other's eyes, like they're not totally in control of what exactly is going to happen, only of the on/off switch.

Dan's first "No" is a whisper as he cups Arin's face and the following "Fuck no" is mashed between their lips when he kisses him again, open mouthed and messy.

To Dan, all of this -the furious, standing make-out session sustained by a nearby hard surface- feels like something two people would do at the end of a particularly good date. So he ponders, as he wraps a hand around the back of Arin's skull and he counters by sucking Dan's lower lip into his mouth, if they maybe shouldn't be so out in the open, what wih the oncoming traffic and the not total cover offered by his car, but then his fingers are following Arin's head as it dips down to mouth at his neck and he just wants to moan and grind his neatly confined dick against Arin's thigh. 

As soon as he does, he hears the blunt sound of Arin's kneecap and left palm hitting respectively the car door and window, auditory counterpart of the feeling of Arin's body pressing further into Dan's. Now their torsos are flush and Dan can feel Arin's pulsing with how hard his heart is beating, and it's making it very hard not to become very hard, very fast. 

Dan whines against the denim-thick rub of their crotches, barely enough to distract him from the long awaited return of the taste of Arin's mouth in his own, and he moans a shaky "oh my god" against the side of that very same mouth, when Arin's hands slide down to his upper thighs, then back up an inch to the spot where Dan's legs become ass, and Dan's weight gets slightly lifted off the ground as Arin makes a sound that's halfway between a grunt and a growl, and bucks his hips once, firmly clutching Dan's butt in the meantime.

Dan can't remember being so turned on by just rutting against someone else in a pretty uncomfortable environment: it's like being in high school again, only the thrill of breaking curfew has been replaced with the thrill of adultery and unplanned homosexuality. How very brokeback mountain of the both of them.

He laughs in Arin's mouth, giddy with lack of air to his lungs and attention to his dick then braces himself on Arin's shoulders, swaying his hips forward, fisting a hand in his hair to pull their lips together again so he can bite and lick and not think about stuff in general.

Arin had made up his mind long before they started doing anything: it had been only a matter of time and logistics, and now his resolve is like a balloon getting a pump of helium with each sound Dan makes, and it's pushing against his diaphragm and Arin's going to float away if he doesn't bust it right the fuck now. 

His wrists shake as he slows the kiss down, long sweeps of his tongue against Dan's, deep breaths through his nose that make him feel calmer, if a little dizzy. He brings both his hands to Dan's chest to press him against the cold metal behind them, putting some distance between them.

When Dan slowly drags his eyes open, drunk and loose, his breath sticking against the walls of his windpipe: Arin's expression is dark and his lips parted, glimmering under the streetlight, and they give Dan a rush of adrenaline he barely has time to register before Arin is carefully lowering himself to the ground, to his knees. 

As he hits the concrete, Arin swallows and tries to keep control of his overcrowded beehive of a body: should he look up at Dan? What does he do with his hands? Are his knees gonna hurt while he does the thing, thus making it horrible for him and for Dan in turn? Is there a way he could take his teeth out for a couple of minutes and pop them back in later?  
How the hell do people do this comfortably?!  
He takes a deep breath, hoping Dan's ears are far enough not to notice how panicked and shaky his exhale is.

Dan has to close his eyes tight for a couple of seconds as Arin runs his hands up the front of his legs, a little bit of pressure behind his touch: he's never been so upset about getting blown in his entire life, not even the very first time. 

Arin cups the outline of Dan's erection with one palm, and he manages to look down at his best friend, panting and a little estranged from reality: neon light streaks Arin's hair and casts small shadows underneath his nose and his eyes, his fingers popping the button of Dan's pants. He's so beautiful Dan wants to scream, but he reaches down instead, and awkwardly tucks a strand of hair behind Arin's ear, brushing his cheek with his knuckles like they're in a movie or something.  
Arin grins back at him, and two pairs of hands start pulling Dan's jeans and underwear down, bunching them above his knees.

Being literally face to face with a half hard dick is a little less intense than Arin thought it would be, or maybe that's just because he's reached a level of nerves that prevents him from even feeling nervous. A little puff of laughter escapes him, and he slides his hands back to Dan's hip bones, goosebumps rolling under his fingers.

Dan shakes a little bit, eyes fixed on the small blank space between the head of his cock and Arin's face. 

"Are you sure you wanna do this?"

Arin licks his bottom lip, more pensive than seductive, then shoots a quick glance up at Dan before his eyes go back to what's right in front of them and he's inching forward, no preemptive fingers around Dan's shaft to steady both of them, no vocal response, no alarms going off nor heavenly choirs or anything. 

For several excruciating seconds there's just the damp, careful slide of Arin's lips over the head of Dan's dick, until they finally settle behind the ridge of it and Dan can feel every little movement of the tip of Arin's tongue while it tentatively pokes the foreign object its presented with, his fingers squeezing the top of Dan's thighs when he finally dares to suck on what's in his mouth.

Dan's jaw drops slowly, half in a shocked kind of pleasure and half in symbiosis with the methodical circle of Arin's tongue, spinning slowly around Dan, coating him with one more layer of spit and heat at each lap. 

Dan is reaching complete, raging hard-on at an embarrassing speed, but the more he thinks about the whole situation they're in, the more blood rushes southward through his body, fast and angry and drawn to the spot where his dick meets Arin's face, like his lips are casting a magnetic field and it's driving the iron inside Dan's blood cells crazy.

Dan can feel Arin's body gradually relax against him: he loosens the grip on his hips, the hasty puffs of breath crashing on the hair at the base of his cock become slower, deeper, and the tight seal of his mouth goes slack as he takes Dan further, inch by inch, dedication replacing the fear that stunted Arin's movements before.

Dan finally allows himself to let go too, lifting one hand off the side of the car and touching Arin's neck, trailing up to his ear and his hair, making his eyes dart up. Arin's tongue moves against the underside of Dan's dick to adjust, and he has to swallow down the beginning of a small gag, his eyes shining with involuntary tears.  
Dan expects him to pull away and call the whole thing off, but he recovers, his teeth scraping Dan's shaft amidst the spit-slick slide of his lips pulling slightly backwards. 

Dan means to merely push air out of his lungs, afraid to make any noise whatsoever, but a groan tumbles out of him and he blushes inspite of himself, Arin's fingers wrapping around his dick as he tilts his chin up to look at his distressed best friend. He carefully pulls off, Dan's cock still hard in his hand.

"You okay? Am I doing it wrong?" 

He moves his hand as he asks, and Dan swallows hard and closes his eyes, quivering.. like a little bitch. His Sexbang costume must be twisting and turning inside his armoire right now. 

"I- you're doing fine it's just.."

Dan trails off and looks down, but Arin doesn't return his gaze, tilting Dan's dick up and licking a clumsy stripe up to the tip. Dan hisses and his eyelids slip half-closed, his fingers tangling in the hair just at the top of Arin's neck. 

"I just.. this is a little hard to wrap my head around"

Arin looks up at him as he shifts his weight and Dan worries about his friend's knees for a second, until Arin takes the head and a couple of inches of his dick in his mouth and sucks as hard as he can: a high pitched moan is snatched right out of Dan's throat, then Arin pulls away again, smirking, wiping his lips with the back of his left hand while his right thumb teases a drop of pre-come out of Dan, rubbing his frenulum. 

"Dan, just chill out alright? For me?"

Dan swallows again, allowing himself to feel the dull ache at the base of his spine, the tension in his legs and stomach. He licks his lips and slides his hand further between Arin's hair, pulling him a little closer to his dick.  
Once he's inside Arin's mouth again, he follows the slow bob of his head with his arm, giving him the occasional little sound of encouragement. 

Arin manages to get half of Dan into his mouth before he feels like he's reached his beginner's limit, so he focuses on getting Dan to maybe start to crumble a little bit without gagging too much. 

There are so many things he hadn't even considered. He thought since he'd already seen and touched Dan that way, that he wouldn't be too overwhelmed with it all. And it's not like he was completely wrong, because he's not completely freaking out just yet, but there's so many things: seeing Dan's naked hips up close and the veins that run blue and soft underneath his skin, his own spit running down his chin and how it all feels messy and sort of good, the way Dan's moans sound from down there, the way Dan's dick smells and tastes and his own cock jumping to attention the more Arin realize what's going on.

Arin makes a muffled sound as he unzips his pants and touches himself over his briefs and Dan's dick pulses, his voice finally coming loud and clear and dripping pleasure all over Arin, which makes him groan again, squeezing his own growing erection.  
There aren't many sounds in the universe that can compare with Dan's voice moaning your name when you've got his dick in your mouth, Arin figures as he whines a little again, squirming against his own hand and the harsh press of concrete against his kneecaps. 

Dan's neck goes slack when Arin's tongue goes back to swirling around the head of his cock, and he lets his other, bigger head fall and hit the side of his car, closing his eyes and only allowing his hips to buck up a quarter of an inch so as not to stab his best friend in the throat.  
His fingers close around warm strands of Arin's hair and Dan revels in the sound of clothes rustling and their voices tangling and Arin's mouth sloppily moving around him, wringing Arin's name out of him.  
He doesn't realize how out of breath he is until he has to try to speak.

"Ar.. I'm- I'm there.. I'm almost- fuck"

Arin drags his lips over Dan's cock, sucking on it on his way back, letting it slip out with a pop. Dan manages to only bite back half of a pained moan.

"Is it alright if I don't.. you know. It doesn't gross me out or anything, I just, uh.."

Dan cards his fingers through the hair above Arin's forehead, all the way down to his neck.

"Baby it's fine, seriously, I-" 

Dan hoped he would find a nice, sexy way to say that he knows Arin's done more than enough and that he absolutely doesn't have to fucking swallow for Dan to still be completely floored by the whole thing, but maybe this is one of those times where you can just shut the hell up and look into each other's eyes for a moment and understand. 

Arin keeps looking up at Dan while he strokes him faster and faster, twisting his wrist, secretly counting Dan's harsh breaths as if he could somehow quantify how worked up he's getting him.  
Dan's eyes slide shut, his face starts to contract and Arin's voice is deep and a little rough. Dan wishes he could have it right by his ear and not all the way down there. 

"You called me baby"

Dan huffs, a strained kind of laughter, and only pushes out a "yeah", because he's afraid he's gonna blurt out way too many things of he doesn't stop himself. He wishes they could have done this better. 

Arin chuckles at the way Dan is leaning forward, folding over himself as his dick gets almost menacingly hard and his moans become incoherent, frantic. Arin's hand gets faster and his thoughts get fuzzier, his heart thumping as he dips his head to lick at Dan's balls and the root of his dick and then his best friend is moaning broken curses and bits of Arin's name and he's clinging onto Arin's head for his life and the side of his dick twitches against Arin's mouth as Dan comes hard and shaky, his legs trembling despite how tense his muscles feel under Arin's hands. 

Dan does his best to steady his breathing between curse words, one of his hands still comfortably buried in Arin's hair. He has no idea what he's supposed to do now, while both he and Arin toss dazed looks at the white spots on the ground and the wall behind them, but as soon as their eyes meet he gives a soft tug at Arin's nape and helps him stand up with his other hand.

Arin lets himself be dragged to his feet by Dan's hands and he groans at the snap and the pang of pain coming from his knees. He distantly acknowledges his fingers shaking and he looks down at them because Dan's face is so close now and it feels like years since they've been eye to eye.

Arin wobbles a little, steadying himself on Dan's chest, leaning in, and for a panicky second Dan pulls his head back, a natural reflex he instantly regrets. He can see it dawn on Arin's expression, a veil of embarrassment swiftly covering the hurt of rejection, of the shame in Dan's microscopic movement.

Arin immediately tries to put some distance between them, but Dan doesn't let him: there's a swarm of electric wasps buzzing inside of him as he grabs Arin's hand and keeps it pinned against his chest, his other hand resuming it's place on the nape of Arin's neck. He pulls him close slowly, looking down at his mouth and trying to stop freaking out about the distinctive scent he's picking up from his best friend's breath. It's hard, though, when Arin whispers almost directly into his mouth.

"You don't have to"

But Dan does, and he knows it. But what's more important is that he wants to, and he's wanted to for so long and so hard that he almost feels like laughing at the thought of not having to.  
He kisses Arin with force, knuckles tangled in his hair, a shiver running through his legs from the smooth cold still pressed against his bare ass and the shape of Arin's half hard dick pressing on his hip. 

Arin takes the tiniest step back from Dan to let him pull his pants back up, but he keeps his hands on his ribs and his eyes cast downwards, with the distinctive feeling that he'll remember how Dan's hands move while tucks himself in his boxers, still covered in Arin's spit, for a very long time.  
There's a weird sort of intensity in Dan's stare, and Arin wonders what his friend is seeing right now written across his face. He hopes he doesn't see his lips trembling.

"What was it like?"

Dan's brows draw closer as he pops the button back in place.

"What.. um, you mean like all of it?"

"No, I mean kissing me after I did that,"

"Oh um- I don't know.." 

Dan doesn't like awkwardness between Arin and him, especially now that Arin has already exposed himself so much to him and all he's asking of Dan is to do the same. So Dan tries to manhandle Arin against the side of the car as smoothly as possible and steps into his personal space again, bracketing his head with his arms, palms flat against the window pane.

"I might need another go to answer that,"

Arin huffs before closing his eyes and letting Dan's tongue swoop in, imagining a mattress under their bodies, no clothes in the way and no cars whirring away in haste around them.  
Dan whispers against his cheek like he would if they were slow dancing and still in the seducing process, low and intimate but still casual enough.

"Yeah I dunno, it's like.. the smell of sex, but I can taste it on you." 

Arin tightens his grip on Dan's back, and he moves his leg to subtly grind against Arin's crotch.

"You want a hand with that?" 

Arin can tell the engine is still running high between hem, but there's a different quality to the rumble of it. Like it's reached a peak and now it's descended to a solid plateau.

"Huh.. I um, I think I'm good for tonight-

He presses a dazed kiss on Dan's lips without even realising it, like it's muscle memory already.

-but thanks.. for the thought, again"

Dan smiles against his forehead and laughs only with his chest. Stepping away from Arin's body feels like he's the skin being carefully peeled off of an orange. 

Arin stands from the side of Dan's car and wipes a hand across his chin, his somehow swollen lips, idling out of the narrow corridor and towards his own solitary car. Dan walks behind him until he's reached his driver's side, stopping with his hand on the handle and his eyes on Arin's back, quietly waiting for him to turn around.

They look at each other from across the small parking lot, and Arin smiles, lifting his right hand up and waving as he walks the remaining few feet backwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I take so long to describe a bj just imagine how long third base is gonna take


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the suffering!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, I'm sorry. I haven't forgotten or anything though, I'm just slow as hell. Um.. "enjoy"?
> 
> P.S. I tried to stay mostly on Suzy. I'm not suuuuuuper familiar with her personality, much less with a deeply upset version of her, so sorry in advance if this feels wildly ooc or uncomfortable. I went for what felt right with me.. but let me know if you have ANY suggestions or notes or whatever. As always, everything welcome.

For the whole ride home, Arin feels muffled, out of frame. His eyes are on the road, his body isn't.  
Dan moans in the back of his head, fingers drag against his scalp, and Arin flinches and grins in rapid succession, a spinning wheel of fortune of human reactions, it's colors rapidly veering towards the gloomy side of the spectrum the closer he gets to his nest.

The rumble of the engine fades out into the quiet of his driveway, and his front door looks like that first moment of silence in horror movies, the one where you know what's coming, but your body wants you to be scared anyway. 

Every tile on the floor of his home is the rollup to the cliff he's about to jump off of: he can see the abyss very clearly, the dour pool of water at the bottom waiting in silence. He tells himself there's no shame in running away one more time before he pushes the door to his and Suzy's bedroom open, without hesitation.

 

"Suzy-"

"Hey babe,"

They speak almost at the same time and Suzy sits up, the sleepiness weighing her features down only slightly tainted by a hint of worry at the tone of her husband's voice.

The only light source in the room comes from the lamp on her side of the bed, and it's barely enough for her to make out Arin's general shape: he -does- look a little off, but then again it's almost 2 in the morning and he just got off work, a bit of dishevelment is in order, she figures. 

She grabs her glasses from the nightstand, adjusts her legs under the sheets. 

As Arin looks at her face, he momentarily realises that this is the last time she looks back at him without the knowledge of what he's about to confess. He'll never have this ever again. The warm routine, the smooth surface of her trust.  
It takes Arin out of reality for a second, a small sense of vertigo making him stumble over himself.

"Suzy I-"

His throat spasms and he swallows the chunks of his words.

"Arin you're kinda scaring me, what's wrong?"

This isn't how he wanted to do it. She doesn't deserve the cold shower. He wanted to sit down. Explain. Calmly face the consequences to his dumb fucking actions. He hasn't even told Dan. He's fucking this up beyond repair.  
He's too breathless to breathe properly. 

It's this way or no way.

"I.. cheated on you and I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't kno-"

Suzy's face scrunches up like a bunch of wet rugs has just been dumped in her lap out of bloody nowhere. She gives the faintest shake of her head and blinks several times in the soft golden light, her book still open and resting face down across her thighs. 

"I- wait. What the hell are you-"

She has to pause and swallow, air struggling past her vocal chords. She doesn't wanna look up, so she poses her question to the duvet bunched by her feet.

"..what?"

Thirty seconds pass in what Suzy believes is the heaviest silence she's ever felt: it's like the ringing after a bomb has exploded, only you can't really hear it. It's phantom pain.

 

Why the hell wouldn't he say anything else after something like that? Was it the most unsavory set up for a joke in the history of the universe? Is she very obviously missing something? 

Arin's eyes look huge even in the semi-obscurity of the doorway where he's still standing, and Suzy can see the shallow, irregular breaths he's taking. 

She loves him, but he's not that good of an actor. Slowly, menacingly, a low thrum starts buzzing inside her chest, and she puts her palms down on the mattress to push herself more upright against the headboard. 

"Arin for Christ's sake, say something"

He breaks, as if he was waiting for her cue. His words come out like water from a shattering dam: tripping over each other, unbalanced, too much force distributed unequally, backed by the panic typical of the unprepared meeting the unexpected.

"I have no idea what to say! I didn't wanna do it like this but I couldn't keep it anymore after tonight and- and I know it's not the appropriate time and shit but I saw you and I- I- I couldn't do it anymore and I'm so fucking sorry Suzy you have no idea an-" 

"You didn't wanna do it like this? You mean you would have preferred I'd already have had my morning coffee and a good night's sleep? Would that have been an appropriate time to tell me you.. what, you fucked someone else, Arin? Is that what you're so sorry about?"

Arin looks wounded by the mockery, and a wave of confusion washes over Suzy's maelstrom of dread and nausea when she feels genuinely sorry for hurting him like that.  
Love really is the cruelest thing sometimes.

It doesn't last very long though, only until her brain is done processing the rest of Arin's jumbled words. 

"What do you mean after tonight?"

Arin is looking at her now, less deer caught in the headlights. He's straightened up and a light crease runs through his forehead, jaw locked. He's tormenting the skin around his nails on his right hand, left hand fisted up. 

"It.. um."

He stares at the wall and runs his tongue over his teeth, lips sealed tight and his brows drawn together. 

Nothing has ever been harder in Arin's life.

He's about to speak, but he still tastes Dan in the back of his nose and he's certain that she'll know if he opens his mouth now.

 

Suddenly, dishevelment has never looked more post-coital, in Suzy's eyes.  
She wonders if this mystery woman was wearing nail polish while messing up her husband's hair. What color?  
How did she not notice how fucked up Arin's lips were when she first got a glance of him? 

She wishes she had the strength to address the remainder of the withering hard-on in Arin's pants.

Arin stays silent, shifting his weight, tearing tiny strings of skin away from around his nailbeds.

Suzy closes her eyes, clears her throat but her voice breaks anyway.

"You said you were working late."

"And I did but,"

He mumbles an angry curse to the ceiling and keeps his eyes up a little longer than necessary for the action. 

When he looks back at her, Suzy can see the white in them glimmering with the tears he was trying to keep in. 

There's a solid ball of lead between her lungs, scorching hot, her insides sticking to it and burning away slowly but ever so surely.  
This might be real.

"It was just a stupid blow job, okay?! A blow job and a hand job when we were on tour goddamnit, that's it! That's fucking it" 

The ball swells up like he's pumping it full of boiling vapor. It cracks and breaks and there are shards lodged everywhere between Suzy's ribs and falling heavy and sharp from her windpipe to the pit of her stomach. 

Her head spins while she looks at the words being born on his lips, and before she knows what she's doing she is throwing the sheets back and standing up from her side of their bed, like she's suddenly realised that this is not her house, not their bed.

 

Her mistake. She's got the wrong one, she's got the wrong universe.

She gets a glimpse of a rick and morty situation and a little huff of laughter bubbles out of her, like dry heaving. 

Suzy can hear Arin say her name carefully, but the only response her brain manages is the vague shaking of her head as she slips her fingers through her hair, temples pulsing, a vital sign she doesn't know how to handle right now.  
She went to bed worrying about being low on oatmeal for the next morning.

Questions pile up behind her eyelids, a ruckus of disorder and pain. Pins and needles.

"But why?"

She blurts out with a sincerity that startles them both, and she's glad this particular question has outrun every other one because she's only now aware of the fact that she's neither ready for nor interested in any other answer, right now. 

But there's a terrible downside to knowing someone as well as Suzy knows her husband.

Sometimes he'll say he wants something without knowing why, and Suzy'll be the one to come up with a perfect explanation for it. 

She jokes about it, saying that they've melted together to the point that desires will manifest themselves as raw, subconscious longing in Arin's head and abstract, conscious processing of the same thing in Suzy's. Sometimes viceversa. Puzzle pieces.

So of course Suzy already has a sense of why this is happening to him, to them. It's been burning between her lungs since he started talking, probably since he's entered the room. Messed up hair and all.

Only this time she really doesn't feel like laying it out for him.

"I don't know, it's the stupidest mist- the stupidest thing I did in my entire life and I have no fucking excuse other than I'm a disgusting moron. It didn't- it was stupid,"

Her knowledge of Arin has always been a friendly presence inside her body, digesting his words and movements and helping her understand him better and better. Something has made it turn hostile now, and it's bumping the setpoint of her body temperature up, painting everything into a fever dream.  
Suzy shivers, her skin too hot against the dead air floating quietly around the room. 

"You can't say it was a mistake, can you?"

"I- what? Of course it was Suzy, I told you-"

"No, you said it was stupid"

There's the sweet and sour weight of pain in Arin's posture, in the way he looks at Suzy. She knows, but she also needs to hear him say it. Masochistic as it may be.

"Do you regret it?"

"Suze, of course I do, you don't even know how much-" 

He chokes up again, an unexpected, dry sob shoving a cork down Arin's windpipe.

Suzy looks her husband over for a second before directing her eyes out the closed window by her side. 

She was expecting the lie. She also knew it would hurt all the same, knew he would sound so desperate and sincere and hurt. Because he is. He doesn't even know he's lying, probably. 

It's like Suzy tried to swat a bee away for getting too close, knowing she would get stung and it would die and neither would win. But she's also aware neither of them can help it, they're so scared. 

She screws her eyes shut for a moment, then snatches a hoodie off the back of the chair in front of her.

"You can't even admit there isn't a trace of regret in you, and I don't fucking wanna be here right now" 

(...)

Nights can get weirdly chilly in California, but Suzy has never really been bothered by it. Right now, she distantly feels the cold metal of the roof of her car pressing into her, insistent, and yes, it does bother her.

So she shifts around and moves her crossed legs, extends them, bends them at the knees. It's still there. 

It's so goddamn cold. She should probably just get down and go back home, wait for sleep to come. Wait for something.

Her eyes are as dry as the clear night sky, and it almost hurts to blink like it must hurt for the light blue stars to twinkle. 

All the anger she was feeling while driving up to the hills has vanished jarringly quickly, and Suzy's now left with a sucking void of motion, afraid of what she feels inevitably coming. She can hear her brain trudging towards it.

Her husband.  
There's not a place inside of her that doesn't feel tainted by him. He's spilled ink all upon the pages of her progession in time.  
She's aware of existing without him, before him, but that doesn't feel real. That's just a notion she has. 

But everything Arin occupies is tangible. And the slap of thinking about his name is a shock, it's as shameful as tripping over your own self.

Memories crowd around the wound like platelets trying to patch up the spill, but it looks more like rotten blood clotting into a bruise, and Suzy presses it, revels in the absurdity of feeling something so deeply, both emotionally and physically. 

She sobs, her face shrivelling like burning paper, tears making her cheeks itch. She can't reach up to scratch them though: she's elbow deep into a pot of stills stored into her skull, and she tries to reach deeper and deeper to find something that smells bad, that has never sat right, something she never noticed because she had no reason to. 

Her arms are big, sour scoops, and the more she stirs the more she contaminates the warm waves of love quietly plashing before her liquid eyes. Streaks of oil among vulnerable skin and presents and unguarded complicity. It morphs into a sickly rainbow: colors don't melt into each other to form something new but also equal parts them, they keep running parallel, trying to overpower each other, hitting in tides. 

Arin.  
Arin is in the way suzy exists in this world and in the tireless vibration of her pocket, car keys jingling cheerfully against her trembling phone.

She sees him, sullen and determined, sitting on their bed with a hand in his hair and his phone pressed to his ear.  
His voice is quiet, hoarse. 

"Suzy, come back"

Like an oil spill, like the ocean at night, inky-black. It never stops and it spreads further and further.

"Not yet. I can't"

Arin gulps, exhales.

"I'm sorry"

"I know you are"

She's glad he still hasn't told her he loves her. She knows, but her body shakes at the thought of hearing it.

"Arin, tell me who"

He closes his eyes and his brows get closer, lips pressed tight. Suzy sees it clear as the day inevitably coming.

"It's.. I don't know how to just say it"

"Try"

"Why would you want to know?!" 

"Why do I want to know whose mouth your dick was into a couple of hours ago, you ask? Because you're the asshole here Arin, and you don't get to object on what I do or don't want to know"

She swallows back against the rage heaving from the back of her throat. On the other side, Arin's angry sniffles feel preparatory.

He speaks carefully, holding back a colossal swarm of emotions and letting only what's strictly necessary trickle out.

"Nobody sucked my dick."

Suzy's throat feels skinless with confusion. The itch in her cheeks is maddening.

"It was me. I did."

Her heart thumps backwards, but nothing makes a sound around her.

"It's Dan"


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy, am I late. And boy! Would you deserve a longer one.. but it felt like the right place to end it, for now.   
> Sorry friends, been kinda busy and uninspired, but the flame has not died yet, fear not.
> 
> I'll try and finish this before I die, I promise.

Suzy cries in the perfect quiet of the californian night, until she's so tired that every sporadical sob becomes phisically unbearable.   
It feels like the last heaves of a stomach bug, when your body has nothing left to give but the virus won't let you stop and just be still.

Miserable, but still.

She lifts her head from the tin roof of her car, then lets it thump down again. Her skull is so heavy.   
Memories of Arin and her still churn and crowd and clog the gutters of her brain. Every slimey twist and turn of her grey matter smells like him and pain.  
She feels the worst fever coming, because there's no way a wound like this has not already infected, poisoned her whole self.   
The emotional sepsis is going to kill her.

Tears streak from the sharp corners of Suzy's eyes, down her temple and into her hair.   
She wonders if there ever was a moment in time where her eyes were dry and her cheeks didn't itch, salt from inside her own body eating away at them. If they all ever existed outside of this situation.

Dan's face floats in and out of her inner vision. His hugs, his beanie, the way he smells. The cadence of his words, his accent when he sings. Arin is always in the background, everywhere. But where do they overlap? When?  
Why Arin? But why, Arin?

A moment of vertigo makes her head spin. Maybe she's been lying down for too long. Or maybe this whole thing is too absurd to be cobtemplated longer than one minute at a time.  
A lone huff of laughter bubbles out of her, probably propelled by the pang of bitterness hiding behind it. 

Suzy tries her best to pick apart the murderous pain she's directing to the both of them from the wild affection, the raw pile of love she use to safely keep stored inside of her: still not mixed, but they tangle like vines, like last year's christmas lights.

A silent carpet of stars pulses above her, but the longer she stares, the dimmer their light seems to get. Oddly enough, if she looks away and then back again, they shimmer a little brighter, emboldened by the absence of eyes on them. 

There's an analogy there, she feels it nipping at the corner of her thoughts, but her stream of consciousness is so tired now that she can barely hold up the candle of her grief.

The last couple of tears run sideways down her cheeks, shy, as she lifts her torso up onto her elbows with a dull groan from the metal beneath her: Suzy wants to go home, to whatever awaits her and Arin there.

As she climbs down from the roof, joints cracking in the night, her phone buzzes one more time.  
As she looks at Arin's name flashing on the screen, she realizes she has no idea how long she's been here.   
Her thoughts naturally wander towards Arin, to how worried and exhausted he must be. How tired they're both gonna be in the morning and for god knows how many more mornings to come. 

Suzy leans against the driver's side door and silently answers the phone.  
There's quiet on both ends of the line for a couple of seconds, before Arin says her name. 

"Suzy, please, come home"

A crinkling feeling creeps into the hollow cave of her stomach: of course he had to say her name like that.   
Suzy sees herself as a burning sheet of paper on the dusty pavement. She burns, but it's a couple of seconds and she's already ash.  
Airy, soft, extremely cold. 

All bitter words die upside down, on the roof of her mouth.

"I want to"

Arin stays quiet, and in the silence Suzy can hear him controlling his breathing.

"I'll be here"

She huffs again and a small cloud of sadness evaporates from her lungs.

"But will you?"

There are times, Suzy is convinced, where the tone of Arin's voice transcends reality, like it can pierce through the background buzzing of the Earth and reach her just right. With the perfect angle.   
It doesn't even have to be something important that he's saying, but this time it probably is.

"You know I will"

And, as she hangs up, gets inside her car, turns the engine on and starts to drive home, Suzy really does.


End file.
